The Letter of an Intelligencer to the Minister.
‘I am one of the most loyal subjects the king ever had. It was I that prevailed on a friend to put in execution the project I had formed of a book to prove to a demonstration, that Lewis the Great was by all means the greatest Prince that ever was surnamed the great. I have been moreover a long time employed in another work, which will contribute to raise our national glory still higher, if your eminence will grant me a privilege; my design is to prove that since the foundation of the monarchy, the French never lost a battle; and that what historians have hitherto said of our having been sometimes worsted, is utterly false and groundless. I am obliged to set them right upon many occasions; and I think I may say, without vanity, that I have great talents for criticism.
‘As we have lost the Count de L— we beg you will be so kind as to give us leave to elect a president. Great confusion begins to prevail in our conferences; and state affairs are not in them treated with as much method and regularity as they have been formerly: our young men live without the least respect for the old, and without any subordination amongst themselves; it is a true council of Roboam, in which the young keep the old in awe. It is in vain for us to remonstrate to them, that we were in possession of the Tuilleries long before they were born. I am inclined to think they will at last drive us out of it; and that being deprived of the assylum where we had often called up the shades of our French heroes, we shall be obliged to assemble in the king’s garden, or in some more remote place.