Mademoiselle bit her lip and added:

"The President asked sixty thousand first; my men of business offered him
forty, and he accepted it."

Mademoiselle has no generosity, although she is immensely rich; she
pretended not to hear, and it was M. Colbert who sent by order the twenty
thousand livres to the President.

Mademoiselle, vain and petty, as though she were a bourgeoise of
yesterday, showed us her gallery, where she had already collected the
selected portraits of all her ancestors, relations, and kindred; she
pointed out to us in her winter salon the portrait of the little Comte de
Toulouse, painted, not as an admiral, but as God of the Sea, floating on
a pearl shell; and his brother, the Duc du Maine, as Colonel-General of
the Swiss and Grisons. The full-length portrait of the King was visible
on three chimneypieces; she was at great pains to make a merit of it, and
call for thanks.

Having followed her into her state chamber, where she had stolen in
privately, I saw that she was taking away the portrait of Lauzun. I went
and told it to the King, who shrugged his shoulders and fell to laughing.

"She is fifty-two years old," he said to me.

A very pretty collation of confitures and fruits was served us, to which
the King prayed her to add a ragout of peas and a roasted fowl.

During the repast, he said to her: "For the rest, I have not noticed the