CHAPTER I. THE
CLOCKMAKER OF POISSY.
Foreseeing that some who do not love me will be swift to allege that in
the preparation of these memoirs I have set down only such things as
redound to my credit, and have suppressed the many experiences not so
propitious which fall to the lot of the most sagacious while in power, I take
this opportunity of refuting that calumny. For the truth stands so far the
other way that my respect for the King\'s person has led me to omit many
things creditable to me; and some, it may be, that place me in a higher
light than any I have set down. And not only that: but I propose in this
very place to narrate the curious details of an adventure wherein I showed
to less advantage than usual; and on which I should, were I moved by the
petty feelings imputed to me by malice, be absolutely silent.
One day, about a fortnight after the quarrel between the King and the
Duchess of Beaufort, which I have described, and which arose, it will be
remembered, out of my refusal to pay the christening expenses of her
second son on the scale of a child of France, I was sitting in my lodgings
at St. Germains when Maignan announced that M. de Perrot desired to see
me. Knowing Perrot to be one of the most notorious beggars about the
court, with an insatiable maw of his own and an endless train of nephews
and nieces, I was at first for being employed; but, reflecting that in the
crisis in the King\'s affairs which I saw approaching--and which must, if he
pursued his expressed intention of marrying the Duchess, be fraught with
infinite danger to the State and himself--the least help might be of the
greatest moment, I bade them admit him; privately determining to throw
the odium of any refusal upon the overweening influence of Madame de
Sourdis, the Duchess\'s aunt.