What ingrates I have seen, my dear Count, and how corrupt our time is! Perhaps there have never been more virtues in the world, but there has been more honor.” Count d’Argenson and M. de Machault did not like each other, but they were in agreement respecting the Marquise. If Madame de Pompadour was in nowise astonished by the conduct of the first, whose detestation of her she had long been aware of, the defection of the second, who had been her creature, put her beside herself, “Is that a friend?” she exclaimed in amazement. On being left alone with M. de Machault, after the dressing of his wound, Louis XV. charged him, as a friend of his favorite, not to send her an order to depart, but to personally advise her to do so. The Keeper of the Seals called therefore on the Marquise. The interview lasted half an hour. The result was anxiously awaited, and the Abbé de Bernis had returned to learn what passed. But Madame du Hausset shall tell the story. Nobody is so interesting as ear and eye witnesses. “Madame rang; I entered, followed by the Abbé. She was in tears. ‘I have got to go away, my dear Abbé,’ said she. I made her take some orange flower water in a silver goblet, because her teeth were chattering. Afterwards she told me to call her equerry, and she gave him her orders tranquilly enough to have her house at Paris prepared for her, and to tell all her people to be ready to start, and her coachmen not to absent themselves. A few minutes later the Maréchale Mirepoix came in: ‘What are all these trunks for?’ she exclaimed. ‘Your people say you are going away?’ ‘Alas! my dear friend, the master wills it, according to what M. de Machault has told me.’--‘And what is his own opinion?’ said the Maréchale. ‘That I should go without delay.’ During this time I was undressing Madame unaided, she wishing to be more at ease on her sofa. ‘He wants to be master, your keeper of the seals,’ said the Maréchale, ‘and he is betraying you; who gives up the game loses it.’” This language made the clever Marquise thoughtful. Quesnay came in afterwards, “and with his monkey-like air, having heard what had been said, he recited the fable of a fox who, dining with some other animals, persuaded one of them that his enemies were hunting for him, so as to snatch his part in his absence. I did not see Madame again until very late, at the hour of her couchee. She was calmer.”