About this time appeared some verses under the title of Philippiques, which were distributed with extraordinary promptitude and abundance.  La Grange, formerly page of Madame la Princesse de Conti, was the author, and did not deny it.  All that hell could vomit forth, true and false, was expressed in the most beautiful verses, most poetic in style, and with all the art and talent imaginable.  M. le Duc d’Orleans knew it, and wished to see the poem, but he could not succeed in getting it, for no one dared to show it to him.

He spoke of it several times to me, and at last demanded with such earnestness that I should bring it to him, that I could not refuse.  I brought it to him accordingly, but read it to him I declared I never would.  He took it, therefore, and read it in a low tone, standing in the window of his little cabinet, where we were.  He judged it in reading much as it was, for he stopped from time to time to speak to me, and without appearing much moved.  But all on a sudden I saw him change countenance, and turn towards me, tears in his eyes, and himself ready to drop.

“Ah,” said he, “this is too much, this horrible poem beats me completely.”

He was at the part where the scoundrel shows M. le Duc d’Orleans having the design to poison the King, and quite ready to execute his crime.  It is the part where the author redoubles his energy, his poetry, his invocations, his terrible and startling beauties, his invectives, his hideous pictures, his touching portraits of the youth and innocence of the King, and of the hopes he has, adjuring the nation to save so dear a victim from the barbarity of a murderer; in a word, all that is most delicate, most tender, stringent, and blackest, most pompous, and most moving, is there.

I wished to profit by the dejected silence into which the reading of this poem had thrown M. le Duc d’Orleans, to take from him the execrable paper, but I could not succeed; he broke out into just complaints against such horrible wickedness, and into tenderness for the King; then finished his reading, that he interrupted more than once to speak to me.  I never saw a man so penetrated, so deeply touched, so overwhelmed with injustice so enormous and sustained.  As for me, I could not contain myself.  To see him, the most prejudiced, if of good faith, would have been convinced he was innocent of the come imputed to him, by the horror he displayed at it.  I have said all, when I state that I recovered myself with difficulty, and that I had all the pains in the world to compose him a little.

This La Grange, who was of no personal value, yet a good poet—­only that, and never anything else—­had, by his poetry, insinuated himself into Sceaux, where he had become one of the great favourites of Madame du Maine.  She and her husband knew his life, his habits, and his mercenary villainy.  They knew, too, haw to profit by it.  He was arrested shortly afterwards, and sent to the Isle