Pompadour. Her manuscript was written, she explains, by aid of a
brief diary which she kept during her term of service. One day M.
Senac de Meilhan found Madame de Pompadour's brother, M. de
Marigny, about to burn a packet of papers. "It is the journal," he
said, "of a femme de chambre of my sister, a good, kind woman." De
Meilhan asked for the manuscript, which he later gave to Mr.
Crawford, one of the Kilwinning family, in Ayrshire, who later
helped in the escape of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette to
Varennes, where they were captured. With the journal of Madame du
Hausset were several letters to Marigny on points of historical
anecdote.[1]


[1] One of these gives Madame de Vieux-Maison as the author of a
roman a clef, Secret Memoirs of the Court of Persia, which contains
an early reference to the Man in the Iron Mask (died 1703). The
letter-writer avers that D'Argenson, the famous minister of Louis
XV., said that the Man in the Iron Mask was really a person fort
peu de chose, 'of very little account,' and that the Regent
d'Orleans was of the same opinion. This corroborates my theory,
that the Mask was merely the valet of a Huguenot conspirator, Roux
de Marsilly, captured in England, and imprisoned because he was
supposed to know some terrible secret--which he knew nothing about.
See The Valet's Tragedy, Longmans, 1903.


Crawford published the manuscript of Madame du Hausset, which he
was given by de Meilhan, and the memoirs are thus from an authentic
source. The author says that Louis XV. was always kind to her, but
spoke little to her, whereas Madame de Pompadour remarked, "The