"
Next day there was a general rumor of my presentation. My friends
asserted that I had the king's promise. This was imprudent on
their part, and they injured my interest whilst they flattered my
vanity. They put the Choiseul cabal to work, who intrigued so
well that not a person could be found who would perform the
office of introductress. You know the custom: the presentation
is effected by the intermediation of another lady, who conducts
the person to be presented to the princesses, and introduces her.
This custom had passed into a law, and it would have been too
humiliating to me to have dispensed with it.
This was a dire blow for me: it distressed me sadly, and I wept
over it with my friends. The duc de Richelien said to me,
"With money and promises everything can be managed at court. There
is no place where they know better how to value complaisance, and
the price at which it is sold. Do not give yourself any uneasiness;
we shall find the lady we want."
And we did find her, but her compliance was dearly bought. Two
ladies who were applied to stipulated for most outrageous
conditions. One, the marquise de Castellane, consented to present
me, but demanded that she should be created a duchess, and have
a gift of five hundred thousand livres: the other, whose name I
forget, asked for her husband the order of the Holy Ghost and
a government, a regiment for her son, and for herself I forget
what.
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