sign a pardon. Sometimes, indeed, she was ironic in her compassion.

"Madame," said M. de Sartines to her one day, "I have discovered
a rogue who is scattering songs about you; what is to be done with him?"

"Sentence him to sing them for a livelihood."


But she afterwards made the mistake of pensioning Chevalier de
Morande to buy silence.

The pleasures of the King and his favorite were troubled only by
the fortune-tellers. Neither the King nor the countess believed in
the predictions of the philosophers, but they did believe in
divination. One day, returning from Choisy, Louis XV found
under a cushion of his coach a slip of paper on which was transcribed
this prediction of the monk Aimonius, the savant who could read
all things from the vast book of the stars:

"As soon as Childeric had returned from
Thuringia, he was crowned King of France
And no sooner was he King than he espoused
Basine, wife of the King of Thuringia.
She came herself to find Childeric. The
first night of the marriage, and before the King
had retired, the queen begged Childeric to look
from one of the palace windows which opened on a
park, and tell what he saw there. Childeric
looked out and, much terrified, reported to the
princess that he had seen tigers and lions.