‘And what does it matter?’

“‘What does it matter?” say you. More than you think. Are you aware of this one fact, that at present, while the king bleeds us to the white, the fortune of his light-of-love is incalculable? She got herself given a hundred and eighty thousand francs a year: but that was only a drop in the bucket, that doesn’t count any more now; you can’t imagine the fearful sums that the king throws at her head: three months of the year don’t go by without her catching in passing, as if by accident, five or six hundred thousand francs, yesterday on the salt tax, to-day on the increases of the treasury of the Stables; in addition to all the suites that she has in the royal mansions, she buys La Selle, Aulnay, Brimborion, Marigny, Saint- Remy, Bellevue, and as many estates again, houses in Paris, in Fontainebleau, in Versailles, in Compiègne, without counting a secret fortune invested in every country in all the banks of Europe, in case of disgrace probably, or of the king’s death. And who pays for all that, if you please?’

‘I don’t know, sir, but it isn’t me.’

‘It is you, as well as the rest of us; it is France, it is the people who sweat blood and water, who cry out in the streets, who insult Pigalle’s statue. And the Parlement wants no more of that: it wants no more new taxes. When it was a question of war expenses our last crown was ready: we didn’t dream of haggling. Our victorious king could see clearly that he was loved by the whole kingdom, see it even more clearly still when he was at death’s door. Then all dissension, all faction, all bitterness ceased: the whole of France kneeled at the king’s bedside and prayed for him. But if we pay without counting his soldiers or his doctors we do not want any longer to pay his mistresses, and we have other things to do than to entertain Madame de Pompadour.’

‘I am not defending her, sir. I wouldn’t know whether she was right or wrong. I have never seen her.’

‘Doubtless: and you wouldn’t be sorry to see her, isn’t that the way of it, so that you could have some opinion about it? For at your age the head judges through the eyes. Try them if you think fit: but that pleasure will be refused you.’

‘Why, sir?’

‘Because it’s foolish: because this marquise is as invisible in her little boudoirs at Brimborion as the Grand Turk in his harem: because all the doors will be shut in your face. What do you want to do? Attempt impossibilities! Seek for fortune like an adventurer?’

‘No, but like a lover. I do not claim a favour at all, sir, but I appeal against injustice. I have a definite hope, almost a promise from M. de Biron. I was on the eve of possessing the lady I loved, and that love is not unreasonable; you had not disapproved of it Let me then try to plead my cause. Whether I shall have to do with the king or with Madame de Pompadour I do not know, but I want to go.’

‘You do not know what the court is like, and you want to go there!’

‘Well, maybe I shall be received more easily, for the very reason that I am unknown there.’

‘You, unknown, sir! Do you think that? With a name like ours! We are gentlemen of old descent, sir: you could not possibly be unknown.’

‘Well then, the king will listen to me!’

‘He will not even deign to hear you. You dream of Versailles, and you think you’ll be there when your postilion stops. Suppose that you get in to the antechamber, to the gallery, to the Œil de Bœuf, you will see between his majesty and yourself, nothing but the leaf of a folding door: there will be an abyss. You will turn around, you will look for subterfuges, for protection, you will find nothing. We are relations of Monsieur de Chauvelin: and how do you think that the king avenges himself? By torture for Damiens,