Duc d'Ayen made it the subject of a pleasantry, which detracted nothing
from the merit of the sacrifice--but which is rather too gay for us to
venture upon.]

and she is turned off." This was not Madame's only subject of alarm. A
relation of Madame d'Estrades,

[The Comtesse d'Estrades, a relative of M. Normand, and a flatterer of
Madame de Pompadour, who brought her to Court, was secretly in the pay of
the Comte d'Argenson. That Minister, who did not disdain la Fillon, from
whom he extracted useful information, knew all that passed at the Court
of the favourite, by means of Madame d'Estrades, whose ingratitude and
perfidiousness he liberally paid.]

wife to the Marquis de C----, had made the most pointed advances to the
King, much more than were necessary for a man who justly thought himself
the handsomest man in France, and who was, moreover, a King. He was
perfectly persuaded that every woman would yield to the slightest desire
he might deign to manifest. He, therefore, thought it a mere matter of
course that women fell in love with him. M. de Stainville had a hand in
marring the success of that intrigue; and, soon afterwards, the Marquise
de C-----, who was confined to her apartments at Marly, by her relations,
escaped through a closet to a rendezvous, and was caught with a young man
in a corridor. The Spanish Ambassador, coming out of his apartments with
flambeaux, was the person who witnessed this scene. Madame d'Estrades
affected to know nothing of her cousin's intrigues, and kept up an
appearance of the tenderest attachment to Madame de Pompadour, whom she
was habitually betraying. She acted as spy for M. d'Argenson, in the
cabinets, and in Madame de Pompadour's apartments; and, when she could
discover nothing, she had recourse to her invention, in order that she