As for me, I should be miserable if I were the cause of
one single family complaining against you."
The king, delighted at these words, which really came from my
heart, embraced me tenderly two or three times, and said,
"I wish your enemies could understand you, for they would soon
be at your knees. But if we imprison or exile no person, how
shall we strike terror into them?"
"It is not terror but envy that I would excite. Let me be
presented at court, and all my wishes will be satisfied."
"I cannot for the life of me divine why you should lay so much
stress on coming to weary yourself with the ceremonies of myself
and daughters. Heaven preserve you from all the irksomeness of
court ceremony!" And Louis XV sighed. "Did you ever think," he
added, "of all the vanities, all the interests I have to manage;
all the intrigues that are perpetually agitating, and all the opposition
made to me? The court, the city, the people, will rise against
me: they will clamor, groan, complain; verse, prose, epigram, and
pamphlet will appear in uninterrupted succession. You would be
first attacked, and hatred will perhaps extend to me. I shall see
again the times when the Damiens, in the name of the parliaments,
as one party says, in the name of the Jesuits, as the other party
says, and, what is more true, in the name--"
The king suddenly paused; a deep shade of melancholy settled on
his features, his noble head dropped on his bosom.
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