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Meantime, I continued on very uneasy terms with Mon-
seigneur, since I had learned his strange credulity with respect
to me. I began to feel my position very irksome, not to say
painful, on this account. Meudon I would not "go to—for nie it
was a place infested with demons—yet by stopping away I ran
great risks of losing the favour and consideration I enjoyed at
Court. Monseigneur was a man so easily imposed upon, as I
had already experienced, and his intimate friends were so
unscrupulous that there was no saying what might be invented
on the one side and swallowed on the other, to my discredit.
Those friends, too, were, I knew, enraged against me for divers
weighty reasons, and would stop at nothing, I was satisfied, to
procure my downfall. For want of better support I sustained
myself with courage. I said to myself, " We never experience
all the evil or all the good that we have apparently the most
reason to expect." I hoped, therefore, against hope, terribly
troubled it must be confessed on the score of Meudon. At
Easter, this year, I went away to La Ferte, far from the Court
and the world, to solace myself as I could; but this thorn in
my side was cruelly sharp! At the moment the most unlooked-
for it pleased God to deliver me from it.

At La Ferte I had but few guests: M. de Saint Louis, an
old brigadier of cavalry, and a Normandy gentleman, who had
been in my regiment, and who was much attached to me. On
Saturday, the llth of the month, and the day before Quasimodo,.
I had been walking with them all the morning, and. I had
entered all alone into my cabinet a little before dinner, when a
courier sent by Madame de Saint-Simon, gave me a letter
from her, in which I was informed that Monseigneur was ill!

I learnt afterwards that this Prince, while on his way to
Meudon for the Easter fetes, met at Chaville a priest, who was.
carrying Our Lord to a sick person. Monseigneur, and Madame
cle Bourgogne, who was with him, knelt clown to adore the
Host, and then Monseigneur inquired what was the malady of
the patient. " The small pox," he was told. That disease was.
very prevalent just then. Monseigneur had had it, but very
lightly, and when young. He feared it very much, and was-