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Updated: May 20, 2025
Tired of being hauled out in this manner, the Marquis struggled, called Alberoni a "little scoundrel," to whom he would teach manners; and in this heat and dust the Marquis, who was weak, fortunately fell into an armchair hard by.
His guilt was proved upon three points: first, in a paper under the hand of the Spanish Ambassador, the Prince of Cellamara, in which he imparted to Alberoni that the Duchesse and the Duc du Maine were at the head of the conspiracy; he tells him how many times he has seen them, by whose means, and in what place; then he says that he has given money to the Duc du Maine to bribe certain persons, and he mentions the sum.
Gratitude for such a service appeared to Madame des Ursins a certain security for her future tranquillity; but a skilful intriguer who had but very slightly rendered himself agreeable to the princess Alberoni, a native of Parma afterwards celebrated throughout Europe as the Cardinal Alberoni, but then occupying a subordinate position in Spain, conceived at that moment one of those vast plans to which his fertile genius was wont to give birth, and which would have placed him in the foremost rank of great men had a like success equally crowned them all.
He was the son of a gardener, who became an Abbe in order to get on. He was full of buffoonery; and pleased M. de Parma as might a valet who amused him, but he soon showed talent and capacity for affairs. The Duke thought that the night-chair of M. de Vendome required no other ambassador than Alberoni, who was accordingly sent to conclude what the bishop had left undone.
On one occasion the Duke of Parma sent the bishop of that place to negotiate some affair with him; but M. de Vendome took such disgusting liberties in his presence, that the ecclesiastic, though without saying a word, returned to Parma, and declared to his master that never would he undertake such an embassy again. In his place another envoy was sent, the famous Alberoni.
On the 17th of April a rascal was brought in who was near surprising my son in the Bois de Boulogne a year ago. He is a dismissed colonel; his name is La Jonquiere. He had written to my son demanding enormous pensions and rewards; but meeting with a refusal, he went into Spain, where he promised Alberoni to carry off my son, and deliver him into his hands, dead or alive.
Neither of the two ever forgot this matter; and the dislike of Alberoni to the Regent led, as will be seen, to some strange results. I will add here, that the treaty of alliance between France and England was signed a short time after this event.
And of Cellamare, the Spanish Ambassador. Monteleon and Portocarrero. Their Despatches. How Signed. The Conspiracy Revealed. Conduct of the Regent. Arrest of Cellamare. His House Searched. The Regency Council. Speech of the Duc d'Orleans. Resolutions Come To. Arrests. Relations with Spain. Alberoni and Saint-Aignan. Their Quarrel. Escape of Saint-Aignan. The Regent Sends for Me.
I pity him when I look towards the end of his political career. He writes well, and has put down the insolent English dispatch concerning the habeas corpus and the arrests of dubious, if not treacherous, Englishmen. But if any, he has some very, very faint similarity with Alberoni. He easily outwits here men around him; most are politicians as he; but he never can outwit the statesmen of Europe.
In that age men were not accustomed to see adventurers play for kingdoms, and Theodore became the common talk of Europe. He had served in the French armies; and having afterwards been noticed both by Ripperda and Alberoni, their example, perhaps, inflamed a spirit as ambitious and as unprincipled as their own.
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