We fall out for ever if you do not take five hundred French livres from the arrears which the Queen owes to me, and of which Pallu[2] promises the payment. You must have an hundred crowns beside from Bernard, and as much from the hookseller who will bargain for the priviledge of the Swedish king’s life : that must be so or we are no friends.
I will write to Pallu in a few days to thank him. But I would know before whether he knows of my concealment here, and what he thinks upon it. You ought not to discover any thing to him ; but let him discover to you what he knows.
Before I went out of Paris I received, at M. Cavalier’s house, a letter written to me by cardinal Fleury, which was sent to London, and back from London to Paris. The priest is very civil : he vouchsafes to write to me most obligingly that he has taken away my rents without mercy.
I hope M. de Brancas will instruct me on the particularities which he knows concerning the late king of Sweden : but there are many more curious things relating to that history, which I conjure you earnestly to enquire of.
You may go to the Swedish ambassador, or to his secretary, or his chaplain, or his whore ; ask any of them :
1o Whether it is true count Piper had so great a band in engaging the states to declare the king major at sixteen.
What part the queen-grandmother had in the affairs since her grandson’s majority.
What sort of government was established in Sweden after the king’s arrival on the Turkish dominions.
I beg of you too to see M. de Croissy, of whom I have made a very honourable mention in my history ; and whose family I have much commended, as I think it deserves.
Ask him in what tongue the king did speak with him in Stralsund.
But especially sift him about the Pretender’s interest with that monarch at that time. Endeavour to know whether France had any design to help the Pretender together with the king of Sweden.
Ask him if he knew the famous baron de Görtz, and how
