and I must own, to his honour, that he never encouraged a design
which he knew that his Court had no intention of supporting.

There were other persons, not to tire you with farther particulars
upon this head, of credit and influence with whom I found indirect
and private ways of conversing; but it was in vain to expect any
more than civil language from them in a case which they found no
disposition in their Master to countenance, and in favour of which
they had no prejudices of their own. The private engagements into
which the Duke of Orleans had entered with his Majesty during the
life of the late King will abate of their force as the Regent grows
into strength, and would soon have had no force at all if the
Pretender had met with success: but in these beginnings they
operated very strongly. The air of this Court was to take the
counterpart of all which had been thought right under Louis XIV.
"Cela resemble trop a l'ancien systeme" was an answer so often given
that it became a jest and almost a proverb. But to finish this
account with a fact which is incredible, but strictly true; the very
peace which had saved France from ruin, and the makers of it, were
become as unpopular at this Court as at the Court of Vienna.

The Duke of Ormond flattered himself, in this state of things, that
he had opened a private and sure channel of arriving at the Regent,
and of bending him to his purposes. His Grace and I lived together
at this time in an house which one of my friends had lent me. I
observed that he was frequently lost, and that he made continual
excursions out of town, with all the mysterious precaution
imaginable. I doubted at first whether those intrigues related to
business or pleasure. I soon discovered with whom they were carried
on, and had reason to believe that both were mingled in them. It is