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Updated: July 6, 2025
I wanted to see Cardinal Bernis in the first place, but I postponed everything to the affair of the moment. I went back to the inn and was told by a valet de place, whom Sir B M had hired, that the Englishman had gone to bed. We were in need of a carriage, so I summoned the landlord and was astonished to find myself confronted by Roland in person. "How's this?" I said.
"It is precisely because I was Count Paulo's friend, that I have come!" said Bernis, seriously. "The count loved you, princess, and what I did not know at the time is known to me now. Because he loved and was devoted to you, he hazarded his life, and more than his life, his liberty." "And they have robbed him of that precious liberty," sighed Natalie.
The marchioness, with one of her favorites, Cardinal Bernis, met the Austrian ambassador in one of the private apartments of the palace of the Luxembourg, and arranged the plan of the alliance between France and Austria. Maria Theresa, without the knowledge of her ministers, or even of her husband the emperor, privately conducted these negotiations with the Marchioness du Pompadour.
The second time that the Prince of Santa Croce saw me at the Duchess of Fiano's, he asked me 'ex abrupta' why I did not visit Cardinal Bernis. "I think of paying my suit to him to-morrow," said I. "Do so, for I have never heard his eminence speak of anyone with as much consideration as he speaks of yourself." "He has been very kind to me, and I shall always be grateful to him."
About this time I received a letter from the Abbe de Bernis, who wrote also to M M . He told me that I ought to do my utmost to make our nun take a reasonable view of things, dwelling on the risks I should run in carrying her off and bringing her to Paris, where all his influence would be of no avail to obtain for us that safety so indispensable to happiness.
Such was indeed my intention up to the year 1785, when I found this runagate at Vienna. He was then Count Erdich's man, and when we come to that period the reader shall hear what I did. I promised Mariuccia to come and see her in the course of Lent. The Princess Santa Croce and the worthy Cardinal Bernis pitied me for my hapless love; I often confided my sufferings to their sympathizing ears.
Now resounded a little bell, and Cardinal Bernis smilingly turned to Natalie, who sat by his side. "I think this mystery is about to be unveiled," said he. "And I am quite anxious about it," said the young maiden, gracefully laying her hand upon her heart. "My heart beats as violently as if a mystery were about to be unveiled in my own breast. Do you believe in presentiments, Sir Cardinal?"
She then shut herself up, to confer with the Abbe de Bernis, who left her, to go to the Council. Her door was then shut, except to the ladies with whom she was particularly intimate, M. de Soubise, M. de Gontaut, the Ministers, and some others. Several ladies, in the greatest distress, came to talk to me in my room: they compared the conduct of M. de Machault with that of M. de Richelieu, at Metz.
M. de Bernis was kind, polite, and amiable with M M , but he never ceased to take the greatest interest in every word uttered by C C , who played her part to perfection, because she had only to follow her own nature, and, that nature being beautiful, C C could not fail to be most charming. We had passed five delightful hours, and the ambassador seemed more pleased even than any of us.
Madame is completely absorbed in the Abbe de Bernis, whom she thinks capable of anything; she talks of him incessantly. Apropos, of this Abbe, I must relate an anecdote, which almost makes one believe in conjurors. A year, or fifteen months, before her disgrace, Madame de Pompadour, being at Fontainebleau, sat down to write at a desk, over which hung a portrait of the King.
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