They set out, then, at the commencement of December, furnished with passports from the King—­(for Alberoni had openly caused almost a rupture between the two Courts)—­with a Spanish banker, who had been established in England, where he had become bankrupt for a large amount, so that the English government had obtained permission from the Regent to arrest him, if they could, anywhere in France.  It will sometimes be perceived that I am ill-instructed in this affair; but I can only tell what I know:  and as for the rest, I give my conjectures.  In fact, the Abbe Dubois kept everybody so much in the dark, that even M. le Duc d’Orleans was not informed of all.

Whether the arrival of the Abbe Portocarrero in Paris, and his short stay there, seemed suspicious to the Abbe Dubois and his emissaries, or whether he had corrupted some of the principal people of the Spanish Ambassador and this Court, and learned that these young men were charged with a packet of importance; whether there was no other mystery than the bad company of the bankrupt banker, and that the anxiety of Dubois to oblige his friends the English, induced him to arrest the three travellers and seize their papers, lest the banker should have confided his to the young men, I know not:  but however it may have been, it is certain that the Abbe Dubois arrested the three travellers at Poitiers, and carried off their papers, a courier bringing these papers to him immediately afterwards.

Great things sometimes spring from chance.  The courier from Poitiers entered the house of the Abbe Dubois just as the Regent entered the opera.  Dubois glanced over the papers, and went and related the news of this capture to M. le Duc Orleans, as he left his box.  This prince, who was accustomed to shut himself up with his roues at that hour, did so with a carelessness to which everything yielded, under pretext that Dubois had not had sufficient time to examine all the papers.  The first few hours of the morning he was not himself.  His head, still confused by the fumes of the wine and by the undigested supper of the previous night, was not in a state to understand anything, and the secretaries of state have often told me that was the time they could make him sign anything.  This was the moment taken by Dubois to acquaint the Regent with as much or as little of the contents of the papers as he thought fit.  The upshot of their interview was, that the Abbe was allowed by the Duc d’Orleans to have the control of this matter entirely in his own hands.

The day after the arrival of the courier from Poitiers, Cellamare, informed of what had occurred, but who flattered himself that the presence of the banker had caused the arrest of the young men, and the seizure of their papers, hid his fears under a very tranquil bearing, and went, at one o’clock in the day, to M. le Blanc, to ask for a packet of letters he had entrusted to Portocarrero and Monteleon on their return to Spain.  Le Blanc (who had had his lesson