We have mentioned that among the admirers of Madame de Prie at Turin was the Marquis d’Alincourt, son of the Maréchal de Villeroy. Whether there had ever been anything serious between them is very doubtful, but, at any rate, the lady had been indiscreet enough to write d’Alincourt several letters which were capable of such an interpretation. Now, Le Blanc, who was a friend of d’Alincourt, knew of the existence of these epistles, and, soon after Madame de Prie became the mistress of _Monsieur le Duc_, he contrived, by some means, to get possession of them, and handed them to Madame de Pléneuf, who carried them straight to her daughter’s lover. The precious pair doubtless hoped thereby to bring about a rupture between the prince and his inamorata, but they had sadly underrated the strength of the former’s infatuation; and the only result was to disgust him with persons who could make war with such weapons and to intensify the hatred with which Madame de Prie regarded her mother and the Minister for War. As soon as Madame de Prie understood the precarious situation of _Monsieur le Duc_, and that her mother’s friends, Le Blanc and the Belle-Isles, were his most redoubtable enemies, she recognized that her interests were one with those of her lover, and that, by placing him in a position in which he would be able to defy them, she would shelter herself from their blows. From that moment, the line of action which it behoved her to follow was clear, and she determined to devote all her talents and all her energies to rallying the prince’s partisans around him and thwarting the machinations of their common foes. Nor did she intend to rest from her labours until she had crushed them utterly, and raised _Monsieur le Duc_ so high that they would be powerless to injure either him or herself. But, to accomplish this, it was necessary to begin by freeing herself from certain embarrassments: by appeasing her husband’s indignation and preventing a scandal, which might prejudice her in the eyes of those old-fashioned persons who consented to condone immorality only so long as the conventionalities were duly observed; by rehabilitating her father, whose delinquencies were a continual reproach to her; and by persuading the Condés, and, in particular, the Dowager-Duchesse de Bourbon to accept the situation and admit her to their intimacy. All these matters were satisfactorily arranged. M. de Prie, who, at the beginning of 1720, had resigned his post at Turin, returned to Paris vowing vengeance against his erring wife, and, if gossip is to be believed, did actually go so far as to give her several blows with his cane. But he was a man of feeble character, and, besides, desperately in need of money; and soon, perceiving in which direction his interests lay, he calmed down, and eventually took himself off to Languedoc, with the title of lieutenant-general of that province, which _Monsieur le Duc_ had been instrumental in obtaining for him.