Choiseul replied in a rage by the same courier.
Saint-Germain, he said, must be extradited, bound hand and foot, and
sent to the Bastille. Choiseul thought that he might practise his
regimen and drink his senna tea, to the advantage of public affairs,
within those venerable walls. Then the angry minister went to the
King, told him what orders he had given, and said that, of course, in
a case of this kind it was superfluous to inquire as to the royal
pleasure. Louis XV. was caught; so was the Marechal de Belle-Isle.
They blushed and were silent.
It must be remembered that this report of a private incident could
only come to the narrator, Von Gleichen, from de Choiseul, with whom
he professes to have been intimate. The King and the Marechal de
Belle-Isle would not tell the story of their own discomfiture. It is
not very likely that de Choiseul himself would blab. However, the
anecdote avers that the King and the Minister for War thought it best
to say nothing, and the demand for Saint-Germain's extradition was
presented at the Hague. But the Dutch were not fond of giving up
political offenders. They let Saint-Germain have a hint; he slipped
over to London, and a London paper published a kind of veiled
interview with him in June 1760.
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