duty to tell Your Majesty that this lady passes for a very intriguing
person." "I believe," replied the King, "that it is not without
deserving it that she has got that character."

Madame de Pompadour had many vexations in the midst of all her grandeur.
She often received anonymous letters, threatening her with poison or
assassination: her greatest fear, however, was that of being supplanted
by a rival. I never saw her in a greater agitation than, one evening, on
her return from the drawing-room at Marly. She threw down her cloak and
muff, the instant she came in, with an air of ill-humour, and undressed
herself in a hurried manner. Having dismissed her other women, she said
to me, "I think I never saw anybody so insolent as Madame de Coaslin. I
was seated at the same table with her this evening, at a game of
'brelan', and you cannot imagine what I suffered. The men and women
seemed to come in relays to watch us. Madame de Coaslin said two or
three times, looking at me, 'Va tout', in the most insulting manner. I
thought I should have fainted, when she said, in a triumphant tone, I
have the 'brelan' of kings. I wish you had seen her courtesy to me on
parting."--"Did the King," said I, "show her particular attention?" "You
don't know him," said she; "if he were going to lodge her this very night
in my apartment, he would behave coldly to her before people, and would
treat me with the utmost kindness. This is the effect of his education,
for he is, by nature, kind-hearted and frank." Madame de Pompadour's
alarms lasted for some months, when she, one day, said to me, "That
haughty Marquise has missed her aim; she frightened the King by her grand
airs, and was incessantly teasing him for money. Now you, perhaps, may
not know that the King would sign an order for forty thousand LOUIS
without a thought, and would give a hundred out of his little private
treasury with the greatest reluctance. Lebel, who likes me better than
he would a new mistress in my place, either by chance or design had