It was well known throughout the chateau, that La
Martiniere, the king's surgeon, had strongly recommended a very
temperate course of life, as essentially necessary to recruit his
constitution, wasted by so many excesses, and had even gone so
far as to recommend his no longer having a mistress; this the
courtiers construed into a prohibition against his possessing a
friend of any other sex than his own; for my own part, I
experienced very slight apprehensions of being dismissed, for I
well knew that Louis XV reckoned too much on my society to
permit my leaving the court, and if one, the more tender, part
of our union were dissolved, etiquette could no longer object to
my presence. Still the advice of La Martiniere was far from
giving me a reason for congratulation, but these minor grievances
were soon to be swallowed up in one fatal catastrophe, by which
the honours, and pleasures of Versailles were for ever torn from me.
The
of the , fearing that some of the
subordinate members of that establishment might bring me intimation
of what was going on there without her cognizance, came one day
to apprize me that his majesty had fallen desperately in love
with a young orphan of high birth, whom chance had conducted
within the walls of her harem; that to an extraordinary share of
beauty, Julie (for that was the name of my rival) united the most
insatiate ambition; her aims were directed to reducing the king
into a state of the most absolute bondage," and he," said madame,
"bids fair to become all that the designing girl would have him.
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