Chapter VI: Introduction: By C.-A. Sainte-Beuve (5)

King George was always an artful, dissimulating egoist. I have known that for a long time. Whatever marks of friendship I gave him he never gave me any sign of confidence, and sometimes would scarcely speak to me. I had to drag his words from him, one by one, which is a very unpleasant thing to do; he is completely devoid of good natural feelings. I am not surprised that he takes no notice of you. He cares for no one; but it happens to him, as it does to such people, that in return nobody cares for him. He piques himself on not being civil; I saw this by the manners of those who frequented his Court in Hanover. It is not possible to meet any one more sulky and surly than young Count Platten; if he had not been warmly recommended to me by my aunt, and if his father and mother had not been my good friends, I would have let him be put in a place where he would have had time to make reflections and learn how to live; he fully deserved the Bastille, but serious reasons led me to save him.

PARIS, 1718.

My Lorraine children have arrived; my daughter was beside herself with an excess of joy. I do not find her much changed, but her husband is, dreadfully. He used to have a fine skin and now he has turned to a red-brown and he is stouter than my son. I can say now that my children are fatter than I.

My daughter is gay and content; but her husband seems preoccupied. Yesterday she had a strong attack of fever: God grant it may not be the forerunner of small-pox; for neither the Duc de Lorraine nor my son have had it, and the duke would not fail to be with his wife; three of his brothers have died of that terrible malady; therefore I am very anxious about this. I will write you more about it on Wednesday.

They told me yesterday that a nun has just died who was one hundred and thirty years old; she had a long old age; I don't envy it; if one could stay young it would be another thing and would make one's mouth water for it.

The poor Princess of Wales causes me real pain. In a letter of the 3rd of this month she tells me that her husband and she have three times asked pardon of the king as they would ask it of God, and could not obtain it. I cannot understand such a thing. I fear that the prince may be concerned in his mother's trouble. I have an idea that the King of England believes he is not his son; for it does not seem possible that he should act with his own child as he has been acting. But, in any case, it appears to me that if he publicly recognizes him as his son he ought to treat him as a son, and not behave so rigorously to a princess who, in all her life, never did anything against him and has always honoured and loved him as a father. From what I see and know, I think no good will ever come of it; the irritation is too great. But the king had better put an end to the matter, for it leads to a hundred impertinent things being said, and renews certain old and villanous tales that had better be forgotten. May God guide all for the best! I have been told that a sort of petition has been sent to the Prince of Wales in which it was said that if he had any honour he would admit that the kingdom did not belong to him, but to the legitimate sovereign, now called The Pretender; who was the son of James II. as surely as he, the prince, was the son of Comte Königsmarck. It was terribly insolent.

PARIS, 1718.

My Lorraine children leave me in three days; my heart is full; my daughter would gladly have stayed longer; but the duke was anxious to return. My daughter is, thank God, so firmly fixed in good principles that she can mix in all society without fear of contamination. But nothing was ever seen like the youth of the present day; it makes one's hair stand on end. I know a daughter who encourages the debauchery of her father; she is not ashamed to procure him a pretty waiting-maid, and her mother looks on and lets it be done, so that she may be left in peace [evidently the Duchesse de Berry]. In short, one sees and hears of nothing but shocking things. My daughter tells me that though I wrote them to her she could not believe me, until she saw them daily with her own eyes. Youth no longer believes in God, and neglects all exercise of religion; consequently God abandons it. It is sad to live in a period when honest people have such surroundings; it inspires universal disgust. I thank God that my daughter knows what virtue is and has a righteous horror for the life that people are leading; that is a great comfort to me.

I hear that in Germany the princesses are beginning to go about and act as they do in France; it was not so in my day. The times have come, as Holy Scripture says, when seven women run after one man; never were women what they are at present; they act as if their only happiness was sleeping with men. What one sees and hears here daily, even about the most eminent personages, is not to be written down. When my daughter lived here it was not so; therefore she is in a state of astonishment that puts her sometimes beside herself and has more than once made me laugh. She cannot accustom herself to see, openly at the opera, women who bear the noblest names behave to men with a familiarity that indicates something very different from hatred. She says to me sometimes, "Madame! Madame!"

I answer: "Well, my daughter, what can I do? those are the manners of the day."

"But such manners are infamous," she replies, with truth. Never was the mercy of God needed as it is now, for this epoch of ours is terrible. One hears of nothing but quarrels, disputes, robberies, murders, and vices of all kinds; the old serpent, the devil, has shaken off his chains and reigns in the air. It behooves all good Christians to give themselves up to prayer.

The Princess of Wales writes me that the Countess of Shrewsbury [Madame spells the name Schoresburg] flung herself at the knees of the king to ask pardon for her brother, who is condemned to be hanged. The king replied that if he granted that pardon he should rouse the anger of the English, who would say the guilty man was spared because he was a foreigner, whereas were he English he would be hanged without pity. He deserved severe punishment, but I pity his sister; it is a dreadful thing for nobles to hang on a gibbet. Things are going from bad to worse in England, and I dare write nothing more upon that subject. All Paris says that King George intends to declare publicly that the Prince of Wales is not his son, and, to injure him still further, that he means to marry the Schulenberg, now Duchess of Munster. I told this to Lord Stair; he answered that nothing of the kind would happen, and I need not trouble myself.

In England, and in France too, the dukes and lords have such excessive pride that they think themselves above everybody; and if allowed to have their way they would consider themselves superior to the princes of the blood; some of them are not really nobles. I rebuked one of our dukes very neatly one day. As he was placing himself at the king's table above the Prince de Deux Ponts I said, quite loud: "How comes M. le Duc de Saint-Simon to be pressing up to the Prince de Deux Ponts? does he want him to take one of his sons as page?" Everybody laughed so loud that he had to go away.

PARIS, 1718.

Mme. de Berry has made my daughter a very pretty parting present; it is a commode, or rather a table with drawers, in which are all kinds of stuffs, scarfs, coiffures, etc., in the last fashion. The commode is decorated with gilt ornaments worth a thousand pistoles. My son gave his sister a _necessaire_, that is to say, a small square chest containing whatever is necessary for taking tea, coffee, and chocolate. The cups are in white porcelain with raised designs in gold and enamel.

My daughter has postponed her departure till Wednesday; the day will come soon enough, for whatever grieves us comes more surely and quickly than what gladdens us. The king owes a great deal of money to the Duc de Lorraine, and on account of that debt he has given him one hundred thousand francs to pay the costs of this journey.

The Prince of Wales has done a fine action, and if that does not touch the King of England nothing will ever restore peace between them. Emissaries went to the prince and urged him to put himself at the head of their party. He answered that never in his life would he belong to any party against his father and king. The King of England is a bad man; he had no consideration for his mother, who loved him tenderly, and without whom he never would have been King of England. None of her children, even the Queen of Prussia, whom she adored, ever treated her as they ought.

My Lorraine children are satisfied with me, and I with them. I am also more satisfied with my grand-daughter the Duchesse de Berry, who behaved very well to them. She has good judgment and she shows a disposition to return to religion and a disgust for vice. I hope that God will have pity upon her and grant her the mercy of a sincere conversion. If she had been properly brought-up she would have turned to better things, for she has capacity, and a good heart; also she has, undoubtedly, intellect, and is never captious. I tease her sometimes, and tell her she only fancies she likes hunting; for at bottom it is only a liking for change of place. She really cares for nothing but the death of the game, and she prefers that of a boar to a stag, because it procures her good blood-puddings and sausages. She amuses herself as much as she can; one day she hunts, another she drives, on a third she goes to a fair; sometimes to see the rope-dancers, or to the comedy or the opera; but always in a scarf, never in a gown with a body to it. She sometimes laughs about her figure and her waist. Her flesh is very firm, and her cheeks are as hard as stones.

I once made the Comtesse de Soissons laugh with all her heart when she asked me: "How is it, Madame, that you never look at yourself when you pass a mirror, as other people do?" I answered: "Because I have too much vanity to like to see myself, ugly as I am." There cannot be in the whole world more villanous hands than mine. The late king often reproached me for them, and made me laugh heartily myself. As I never in my life could boast of having anything pretty about me, I took a way of laughing myself at my own ugliness; and that has answered, for indeed I have often found cause to laugh.

Mme. de Berry does not eat much at dinner, and it is impossible that she should, because she makes them bring her, before she gets up, all sorts of things to eat; she never stirs from her bed till mid-day; at two o'clock she sits down to table, and does not leave it till three; she takes no exercise; at four they bring her eatables of all kinds, fruits, salad, and cheese; at ten she sups, and goes to bed between one and two o'clock; she drinks the strongest brandy.

The youth of both sexes in France lead the most reprehensible life; the more licentious it is, the better they think it. That may be very nice, but I confess I do not think it is. They do not follow my example in having regular hours; but I am determined not to alter my conduct to suit theirs, which seems to me that of sows and hogs.

Nothing in the world disgusts me so much as the taking of snuff; it makes all noses horrible and spreads a fetid odour. I have known persons with sweet breath who in six months after they took to tobacco, smelt like goats With noses besmeared with snuff they look, forgive me the expression, as if they had tumbled into a cesspool. The king detested the habit, but his children and his grandchildren persisted in it, though they knew how he disliked it. Persons should abstain altogether, for if they take a little they soon want to take much. People call it the magic herb, because those who once begin to use it cannot go without it.

PARIS, 1718.

I received a letter yesterday from my daughter; she and her husband are, thank God, safely back at Lunéville in good health. She sends me the measure of the height of her eldest son, taken the week before he was eleven years old; he is just as tall as the Duc de Chartres, who will be fifteen next July. I am afraid my grandson Lorraine is going to be a giant, for the Duc de Chartres is not small for his age. All my Lorraine children are robust; their mother is healthy and always well; she is not good for nothing like Mme. d'Orléans. Never did any one hear of such laziness as hers. She has had a sofa made on which she can lie while playing lansquenet; we laugh at her, but it does no good. She plays cards lying down; she eats lying down; she reads lying down; in short, she spends nearly all her life lying down. It must be bad for her health; and in fact, she is almost always ill; one day she complains of her head, another of her stomach. But it seems, in spite of that, she can make robust children; her three eldest daughters are strong and healthy; the first and third are tall and stout; they are built like men,--Mlle. de Valois especially.

The Montespan, the _guenipe_, and all the waiting-women made Mme. d'Orléans believe that she did my son great honour in consenting to marry him. She cannot endure any contradiction on the subject of her vanity in being daughter of the king; she does not comprehend the difference between legitimate and bastard children; her nature is proud and full of vanity; my son often calls her in jest Madame Lucifer. She takes all the flattering things that are said to her as her right. She thinks her husband prefers his eldest daughter, the Duchesse de Berry, to her; the daughter has no great affection for her mother.

PARIS, 1718.

The person whom I hope to see correct herself [the Duchesse de Berry] has judgment and a good heart. One might hope for her return to better ways if she were not in the midst of such bad company; her aunts and cousins on the maternal side also set her a bad example, for they lead the most irregular lives. The mother acts only from caprice; one day she hates her daughter without knowing why; another she approves of all she does, good or bad; that makes me fear that the good resolutions made at Easter will have no results, and that the devil will return to the house he left, accompanied by seven other evil spirits more wicked than himself, as Holy Scripture tells us. In short, one sees and hears nothing here but grievous things; I can do nothing; and I am most sincerely afflicted. My daughter did not stay here long enough for her good example to have any effect. They asked me how I managed to bring her up so well; I answered: by always talking reason to her; by showing her why such or such a thing was good or bad; by never passing over any foolish caprice; by striving as much as possible that she should not see bad examples; by not disheartening her with attacks of ill-humour; by praising virtue, and inspiring her with a horror of vice of all kinds. That is how I brought up my daughter, who, thanks be to God, has won the respect of all. But it is not to be supposed that we can bring up children without giving ourselves great trouble; vigilance and activity are indispensable.

In Germany there is one good thing: those who put no curb upon their conduct are despised. Here it is not so; youth imagines that the lectures of old persons are simply the result of bitterness in those who did the same things themselves in other days. People with bad reputations are just as well received and treated as those who have always led good lives; and it is that sight which ruins youth.

SAINT-CLOUD, 1718.

I write you with a troubled heart, and yesterday I wept the whole morning. The good and pious Queen of England died at seven o'clock yesterday morning at Saint-Germain. Assuredly she is now in heaven. She did not keep a penny for herself, but gave all she had to the poor; she supported whole families; she never said an unkind thing of any one, no matter who, and if others began to talk to her about their neighbours, she would say: "If it is harm of any one, I beg you not to tell me." She bore her misfortunes with perfect resignation; she was polite and agreeable, though far from being handsome; she was always cheerful and was constantly praising our Princess of Wales. I loved her well, and her death grieves my heart. She died with sincere satisfaction, thanking God for delivering her from this world. I think, as you do, that we may look upon her as sainted; more so than her husband; though I believe that he is also in heaven; he suffered with great resignation. The queen had great firmness, and true royal qualities, much generosity, politeness, and judgment. She used to joke me about my liking for the theatre. She told me once, laughing, that there had been a time when she could not go out, because her horses were dead and she had no money to buy others, but she never complained of her misfortunes.

She was very thin, but more so in the body than in her face, which was long, the eyes spiritual, the teeth white and large, the skin wan, which showed all the more because she never wore rouge; she had a good expression of countenance, and was always very clean. My son, out of compassion for her poor servants, has allowed quite a number of them to keep their pensions.

It is perfectly false that she left great sums of money behind her. She supported her son, as well as her household; she gave pensions to most of her ladies; she maintained whole families of English people, and deprived herself of necessaries to succour the poor in hospitals. In the matter of cupidity she was not an Italian, for she never laid a penny aside. It may truly be said that she had all the royal virtues. Her sole fault (for no one is perfect) was in pushing her piety to such extremes; but she paid dear for that, as it was really the cause of all her misfortunes. She could not make any savings while living in France, for her pension was paid irregularly, and she was forced to borrow money and make debts. It is not true that her servants pillaged her furniture. She was lodged at Saint-Germain, where the furniture belongs to the king. Few queens of England have been happy; and the kings themselves in that land have not had much to make them so.

PARIS, 1718.

Mme. de Berry has nursed her mother through an illness with the devotion of a Gray Sister. I should be very ungrateful if I did not feel attachment to her, for she shows me all possible friendship and treats me with such politeness that I am often quite touched by it. The Maintenon was so afraid that the king would like the Duchesse de Berry, and thus be detached from the dauphine, that she did her as many ill-turns as she could. But after the death of the dauphine she patched matters up, though, to tell the truth, the liking of the king for the duchess was never great.

Nothing new from England: the king is defiant and suspicious. The English are wily and think only of their own interests; they see very well that they can fish in troubled waters, and that as long as there is ill-will between father and son, the king will not think of tightening his authority upon them. They therefore endeavour to keep up the ill-temper that is natural to him. I do not believe he will return to Hanover as soon as some people think. I heard from the Princess of Wales yesterday that she had written to the king a most submissive letter; the king answered it harshly and made her many reproaches on her behaviour. He will get himself laughed at for behaving in that way; for the good reputation of the princess is perfectly established. I cannot comprehend the king's behaviour.

IV.

LETTERS OF 1718-1719.

SAINT-CLOUD, 1718.

Historians often tell lies. They say in the history of my grandfather, the King of Bohemia, that my grandmother, the queen, carried away by her ambition, never left her husband a moment's peace until he declared himself king. There is not a single word of truth in all that. The queen thought of nothing but seeing comedies and ballets and reading novels. They also say in the history of the late king that it was from generosity he retired from Holland and consented to make peace. The truth is that Mme. de Montespan, after giving birth to a daughter (now Mme. la Duchesse), had returned to Versailles, and the king longed to see her.

They also attribute the first war in Holland to the king's ambition, whereas I am positively sure that war was undertaken because M. de Lionne, then minister, was jealous of his wife on account of Prince William of Furstemberg. To get the prince out of France he began the war against Holland and the emperor. If historians lie in that way about things that have passed before our noses, what are we to believe as to the things that are far away from us and happened a great many years ago? I think that histories, except those in Holy Writ, are as false as novels; the only difference is that the latter are more amusing.

Nothing new here. I am told that yesterday a man, wanting to beat his wife, with whom he was displeased, prayed thus: "My good God, command that the blows I am about to give thy servant may correct her and make her virtuous."

I went to Paris yesterday to see my son and his family and be present at the representation of a new play, called "Artaxerxes," in which there was nothing extraordinary, though there were one or two fine points. On entering my box they gave me your letter of the 7th.

I am so well at Saint-Cloud, where I am tranquil and happy, whereas in Paris I am never allowed an instant of rest; one person brings me a petition, another requests me to use my influence, another solicits an audience, another demands an answer to all the letters he has written, until I really cannot bear it any longer. And then people are surprised that I am not charmed with my fate! In this world great people have their troubles as well as little people; that is not surprising; but what is very annoying for the first is that they are always surrounded by a crowd, so that they cannot hide their griefs nor indulge them in solitude; they are always on exhibition.

My son does not like the country, he cares for nothing but the life of cities. In that he resembles Mme. de Longueville, who was extremely bored in Normandy, where her husband lived. Those about her said, "Good God! madame, ennui is gnawing you to death; why not take some amusement? Here are horses and dogs and forests; will you hunt?"

"No," she said, "I don't like hunting."

"Will you embroider?"

"No, I don't like embroidery."

"Will you take a walk, or play at some game?"

"No, I don't like either."

"Then what will you do?" some one asked her.

She answered: "I can't say; but I don't like innocent pleasures."

This Duchesse de Longueville was sister of the Prince de Condé. She had led a very irregular life, but afterwards repented and did penance, and never ceased to fast and pray for the rest of her days. She changed so much that no one could imagine she had ever been handsome; her figure alone preserved its grace--but these are old tales.

SAINT-CLOUD, 1718.

Nothing new, except that my son came here yesterday afternoon and brought me the decree which alters the legal value of the currency. The _louis d'or_ will henceforth be worth thirty-six francs; those who have a great deal of money will profit finely. I am not of that number; it is a long time since money and I have kept company.

You ask me if foreigners professing the Lutheran religion can obtain military employments here. No, they are never admitted except into the Alsace regiment and the Swiss corps.

All parliament is unchained against my son, and it is certainly sustained by the eldest of the bastards [Duc du Maine] and his wife. As soon as any one speaks ill of my son and shows himself dissatisfied, the duchess invites him to Sceaux, cajoles and pities him, and spares nothing to excite him still further against my son. I am amazed at his patience. He has courage, goes his straight road, and does not fret himself about anything. The parliament of Paris has made an appeal to all the other parliaments of France to unite with it; but none as yet have committed that folly; on the contrary, they have shown themselves faithful to my son. Everything has been done to rouse the people against him by spreading libels, but so far without effect; I think more would have been produced if the bastard and his wife had not been mixed up in the matter, because they are detested in Paris. I think what prevents my son from acting with vigour against the Duc du Maine is, first, that he dreads the tears and anger of his wife, and next, that he loves his other brother-in-law, the Comte de Toulouse.

My son will soon find means to pay the debts of the late king, for Law (or Lass as they call him in France) is an Englishman who has great talent. The people are not more pressed than they were in the days of the king, but they are not relieved, and my son's enemies profit by that unfortunate circumstance to rouse the public hatred against him. It is false that he accumulates money; he has never touched what comes to him as regent. I do not believe there exists in the world a more disinterested being; he is even too much so; he makes beggars of his children. Nearly all the tales told in the gazettes about him are lies.

SAINT-CLOUD, 1718.

I thought M. Law was an Englishman but it seems he is a Scotchman; and in point of fact horribly ugly; but he appears to be a worthy man and he has much talent; he came near dying yesterday of an attack of colic. Parliament is not quiet yet; it still makes remonstrances. Everything is so horribly ruined in the kingdom that my son will never in all his life have rest or satisfaction again.

The wife of the humpback [Duchesse du Maine] desired to have an interview and explanation with my son. She spoke with emphasis, as she does when she acts comedy, and told him he ought not to believe that the answer to Fitzmaurice's book emanated from her; that a princess of the blood like herself did not condescend to write libels; that Cardinal de Polignac [her lover] had been employed in far too great affairs to meddle in such trifles; and that M. de Malézieux was too great a philosopher to know about anything but science; and as for herself, she was solely occupied in bringing up her children and making them worthy of the rank of princes of the blood--of which they were unjustly deprived. My son confined himself to saying: "I have reason to believe that those libels were written in your house and for you; persons in your service have sworn that they saw them written; I cannot be made to either believe or disbelieve things." As to her last words he said nothing in reply, and went away. The lady boasted everywhere of the energy and firmness with which she spoke to him.

SAINT-CLOUD, 1718.

Parliament thwarts my son and tries more than ever to excite the bourgeoisie and the populace of Paris against him, and great calamities may result. Every night in going to bed I thank God that no evil has happened during the day. Many persons here would like to have the King of Spain for king; he is a weak man and could be managed more easily than my son. Every one thinks solely of his own interest. It is asserted that the King of Spain has rights to the throne of France, and that a great wrong was done when he was induced to renounce his country. All this is said in view of the possible death of the little king. If he should die, my son would be king, but he would not be in greater safety than he is at this moment, and that death would be a great misfortune for him.

I have never known such a summer as this. It has not rained for weeks and the heat increases every day; the leaves on the trees are shrivelled as if a fire had gone over them. There are prophecies that rain will begin to fall on Wednesday. God grant it! but until it rains no one will see me in Paris. We think it is hot here, but every one who comes from Paris exclaims, "Oh! how cool Saint-Cloud is!" Paris is horrible, very hot and stinking; the streets have such a shocking smell one can't endure it; the extreme heat has made the meat and the fish rot, and that, joined to the crowds of people who relieve themselves in the streets, makes an odour so detestable that it cannot be borne.

SAINT-CLOUD, August 30, 1718.

Parliament had formed the fine project, if my son had postponed action twenty-four hours, to make the Duc du Maine ruler of France by declaring the king major and giving to the duke the sole direction of affairs. But my son has disconcerted all this by removing the Duc du Maine from the king and degrading him to his proper rank. They say that the president of parliament was so frightened that he sat petrified as if he had seen the head of Medusa. But Medusa herself could not stop the fury of the Duchesse du Maine. She launched into horrible threats, and said publicly she would soon find means to give the regent a fillip that should make him bite the dust. It is thought the old _guenipe_ is intriguing underhand in this matter with her pupil.

I went this morning to Paris where there is great uproar. My son made the king hold a _lit de justice_, to which the parliament was summoned, and was formally enjoined, in the king's name, not to meddle with the government, but to keep to its own province, that of judging cases and doing justice. The new Keeper of the Seals was installed in office, and as it was known positively that the Duc du Maine and his wife were exciting parliament against the king and against my son, the superintendence of the king's education was taken from him and given to M. le Duc; he was also deprived, he and his children, of the right to be treated as princes of the blood; but they maintained the younger brother in all his privileges because he has always conducted himself well.

The parliament people and the Duchesse du Maine are so furious against my son that I am constantly afraid they will assassinate him. The duchess makes the most insulting speeches; she said at table: "They say that I push parliament to revolt against the Duc d'Orléans; but I despise him too much to take such a noble vengeance against him--I shall know how to avenge myself otherwise." You see what a fury that woman is, and whether I have not good reason to be in a continual agony.

SAINT-CLOUD, 1718.

I know all about the tragical affair of the czarewitch; an exact account of it has been rendered to my son by the people over there. There are many lies about it in the newspapers; the czar is not as barbarous as he was before he travelled here and to other Courts. The czarewitch had taken part in a plot the object of which was to kill his father; it was from papers written by his own hand that he was condemned to death. He began by denying everything, and they could not have convicted him if his mistress had not betrayed him and given up his papers. My son told me last night at the theatre that the czar had assembled a great Council, in which were the bishops and all the councillors of State. He had his son brought before them, embraced him, and said: "Is it possible that after I spared your life you were trying to assassinate me?" The prince denied everything. Then the czar gave to the Council the letters which had been seized, and said: "I cannot judge my own son; judge him, and let him find mercy and not be proceeded against by the full rigour of the law." The Council unanimously condemned the prince to death. When the czarewitch heard the sentence he was overcome with emotion and remained some hours without being able to speak. Then he asked to see his father once more before he died. He confessed everything to him and begged his forgiveness with tears. He lived two days after that, and he died in the greatest repentance. Between ourselves, I think they poisoned him, so as not to have the shame of seeing him in the hands of the executioner. It is a dreadful story and has the air of a tragedy; it is like those of Livius Andronicus.

I am still very uneasy on the subject of my son. He has unfortunately many enemies, but still more false friends; everything is to be feared from both. One of my grand-daughters is determined to be a nun, in spite of my wishes and those of her father. The mother has brought her children up in a way that is a matter of derision and shame; I am forced to see it daily; but all that I could say would do no good.

My heart is full when I think that is the day when our poor Mlle. de Chartres is to make her profession. I have represented to her all I could think of to turn her from that cursed resolution, but without result. In convents the nuns take the names of saints; my grand-daughter has taken that of Sister Batilde. No one is afflicted to the point of weeping, which would surely have happened to me had I been present at her profession. I do not know the motives that determined her; she only told me that she felt herself perfectly capable of enduring the life.

Mlle. de Valois, the fourth daughter, is not on good terms with her mother, who tried in vain to make her marry the Prince de Dombes, the eldest son of the Duc du Maine. The mother constantly reproaches the daughter and tells her that if she had married her nephew the misfortune which has fallen upon her brother would never have happened. She is so unwilling to have her daughter before her eyes that she has asked me to keep her for a while with me.

The old _guenipe_ must think herself immortal to still wish to reign though she is eighty-three years old. The blow which struck the Duc du Maine has shaken her roughly. But she has not lost all hope, and she is so little scrupulous as to the means of reaching her ends, that I am very uneasy, for I know what usage she can make of poison. What has happened to the Duc du Maine is a terrible blow to her, and my son is never upon his guard; he goes about the environs at night in strange carriages; he sups in one place and then in another with his companions, among whom are many who are quite worthless; they are clever enough, but have no good quality.

People talk in diverse ways of the Duchesse du Maine. Some people say she beat her husband and broke the mirrors in her room to bits, also everything else that was breakable when she received the news of his overthrow. Others say she never said a word and only wept. M. le Duc is charged with the education of the king. He said that he did not in the beginning ask for that office because he had not reached his majority; but now in the actual state of things he did demand it, and he obtained it.

I must tell you of a most amusing dialogue between Lord Stair and the Spanish ambassador, Prince Cellamare. The latter had reported all over Paris that it was entirely false that the English fleet had beaten the Spanish fleet; and the partisans of Spain who are here managed so well that the news of the defeat was no longer believed, when, suddenly, the son of Admiral Byng arrived, bringing the official account of the action and a list of the ships which the English had captured, burned, or sunk. Lord Stair, having received these documents, said to Prince Cellamare: "Well, monsieur, what do you say now about your fleet?"

"I say," replied the ambassador, "that the fleet is safely at Cadiz."

"I am not talking about the fleet at Cadiz," said Stair. "I mean that of Messina."

"The fleet of Cadiz and all the galleons richly laden have entered the port of Cadiz," returned the prince; and no other answer could be got from him.

The little dwarf [Duchesse du Maine] says she has more courage than her husband, her sons, and her brother-in-law, and, like another Jael, she will kill my son by hammering a nail into his head. My son does not trouble himself about her threats. When I tell him he ought to be upon his guard, he laughs and shakes his head as if I were talking nonsense. But the perils that surround my son's existence make me spend many a sleepless night, and certainly his regency has not been to me a subject of satisfaction.

PARIS, 1718.

The affair of the Duc du Maine is not one of those things that can be forgotten, at least not so long as those two old hussies are living [Mme. de Maintenon and the Princesse des Ursins]; for they stir him up, together with his little devil of a wife, to all sorts of secret plotting against my son. Mme. des Ursins has one good thing about her, however: she does not call upon the good God to assist her intrigues. My son is not in safety, and that troubles me extremely. I do my best to be resigned to the divine will and to accept whatever it provides; but the heart of a mother is too tender about an only son.

You may move lions and tigers and all sorts of wild beasts sooner than wicked people when ambition and cupidity are the cause of their enmity. All arguers on the condition of the country do not know the deplorable state in which my son found the kingdom. When the change in the government occurred each person imagined he would grow rich; they praised my son and expected marvels of him; as these marvels have not been realized, because they were impossible, blame is now substituted for praise. There would be little harm if such complaints exhaled in words, but the discontented are forming intrigues and plots. The French will not stop at anything, and they do not know what gratitude is.

PARIS, 1718.

When I first came to France I saw here many persons such as one may not find again in centuries. There was Lulli, for music; Beauchamp, for ballets; Corneille and Racine, for tragedy; Molière, for comedy; la Chamelle and Beauval, actresses; Baron, Lafleur, Torilière, and Guérin, actors. All these persons excelled in their vocations. La Duclos and la Raisin were equally good; the latter had a great deal of charm. Her husband was also excellent in comic parts. There was likewise a good harlequin and a capital scaramouch. There were good singers at the opera, Clédière, Pomerueil, Godenarche, Duménil, la Rochechouard, Mauvry, la Saint-Christophe, la Brigogne, la Beaucreux. All that one sees and hears now does not come up to such talents.

Everything goes to beat of drum between my son and his mistresses, without the least gallantry. It reminds me of the old patriarchs who had so many women. My son has a good deal of King David about him; he has courage and spirit, he is a good musician, he is small, brave, and ready to love any woman; he is not particular in that respect; provided they are good-humoured, very shameless, and can eat and drink a great deal, he does not mind about their faces.

The Duc du Maine and his party have let his sister [the Duchesse d'Orléans] know that if my son dies she will be made regent, and they have promised her they would then act in all things by her will, and she would be the greatest figure that there was in the world. They told her they meant no harm to my son, but that he could not live long, his life was so disorderly; that he must die soon, or else become blind, in which case he would consent to her exercising the regency. I heard all this from a person to whom the Duc du Maine himself told it; and when one knows it one is not surprised that Mme. d'Orléans wanted to force her daughter to marry the Duc du Maine's son.

SAINT-CLOUD, 1719.

Thank God, my son is now in perfect health; he came here last night and supped and slept, and returned this morning to Paris; he was very gay indeed. He told us that in Spain they have enormous grapes that intoxicate like wine, and that once after eating only one grape his head swam; he went to a convent and said all sorts of foolish things to the nuns, without knowing what he was talking about.

Mme. du Maine is not larger than a child of ten. When she shuts her mouth she is not ugly, but she has villanous, irregular teeth. She is not very plump, has pretty eyes, and is white and fair, but puts on a horrible quantity of rouge. If she was as good as she is bad there would be nothing to say against her; but her malignancy is intolerable. She is easy during the day, which she spends playing cards, but when evening comes the tempers and the follies begin; she torments her husband, her children, and her servants till they do not know how to bear it. She is no beauty, but she has a great deal of intelligence; she is very well educated and can talk on all sorts of subjects, and that attracts to her learned men; she knows how to flatter the discontented and excite them against my son. She is lord and master of her husband. He holds many offices and can give places to a great many persons: in the regiment of the guards, of which he is general; in the artillery, of which he is grand-master; in the carbineers, to which he appoints all officers; he has also his own regiment; and these favours rally to him a great many persons.

PARIS, December 18, 1718.

My son has found himself obliged to arrest Prince Cellamare, because they found on his messenger, who was the Abbé Porto-Carrero, letters from the ambassador which revealed a conspiracy against the king and against my son. The ambassador was arrested by two of the Councillors of State. In his secret despatches he warned Alberoni to be very careful not to be on good terms with my son, because as soon as the treaty was signed he meant to poison the little king; the ambassador added that he would see that my son had his hands too full to think of war, for he had brought a number of provinces to promise to revolt; that their party was strong in Paris, and that Alberoni had only to send money and not spare it. I believe the lamester, brother of my daughter-in-law, will be found in this affair. The ambassador has been interrogated by the two Councillors of State, and he admitted, laughing, that he wrote the letters in order to avoid the evils of war, and wanted simply to frighten my son. When they asked him why he had said such infamies of the regent, he replied that he must admit there had been a little poison in his remarks, but that poison was necessary to compose an antidote. What is very strange is that the Maréchal de Noailles, once my son's sub-governor, is implicated in the plot; that is because he is related to that devil incarnate, the Princesse des Ursins, who will pursue my son to the death,--her sole motive being that he thought her too old to wish to be her lover. Cellamare's letters have been printed, so that every one can see the thread of the conspiracy.

If the Abbé Dubois were at his first lie he would be dead long ago; he is passed master in the art of lying, above all when it is to his personal advantage; if I wrote down all that I know about that, it would make a long litany. It was he who clandestinely told the king at the time of my son's marriage what he had better say and do to bring it about; he also had conferences on that subject with the Maintenon. He behaves now as if he thought that he and I were perfectly agreed, and no matter what disagreeable things I say to him, he turns them all into jest. I will do him justice and say he is a man of capacity; he talks well and is good company; but he is false and selfish as the devil; he looks like a fox, his deceitfulness can be read in his eyes. His portrait might be made as a fox crouching on the ground to pounce on a hen. But he can express himself so well as an honest man that I regarded him as such till the marriage of my son; it was then I discovered his trickery. If that abbé were as good a Christian as he is an able man, he would be excellent; but he believes in nothing, and it is that which makes him false and a scoundrel. He is well-informed, no doubt of that, and he gave my son a good education; but I wish he had never seen him, and then this miserable marriage, which I deplore, would never have taken place. Except the Abbé Dubois, no priest has any favour with my son.

PARIS, 1719.

It is certain that my son is much to be pitied on account of his wife, and for this, if there were no other reason, I cannot comprehend why he should like the Abbé Dubois as he does; for it was that abbé who persuaded him to consent to the marriage and plunged him into all that affliction. My son sees his wife every day; if she is in a good humour he stays a long time with her; if she is out of temper, which often happens, he goes away and says nothing.

I used to be attached to the Abbé Dubois because I thought that he truly loved my son and only thought of his good and his advantage; but when I found he was a faithless dog looking to nothing but his own interests, and did not care in the least for my son's honour, but was helping to precipitate him to eternal damnation by letting him plunge into debauchery, all my esteem for that little priest changed to contempt. I heard from my son himself that the abbé met him once as he was about to enter a bad house, and instead of taking him by the arm and leading him away, he only laughed. By such laxity and by my son's marriage he proved that neither faith, fidelity, nor decency was in him. I am not wrong in suspecting him of taking part in that marriage. What I know I have from my son himself and from the persons around the old _vilaine_ in the days when the abbé went to her secretly at night to help her intrigues and betray the young master whom he sold.

SAINT-CLOUD, 1719.

I am so troubled that my hand trembles: my son has come to tell me that he has been obliged to decide on arresting his brother-in-law, the Duc du Maine and the duchess. They are the leaders of the shocking Spanish plot. All is discovered; the papers of the ambassador of Spain were seized, the persons arrested have confessed. The duchess, being a princess of the blood [daughter of M. le Prince de Condé], was arrested by four captains of the guard; her husband, who was in the country, by a lieutenant. That makes a great difference between them. The duchess was sent to Dijon, and her husband to Doullens, a little fortress. Their people who were in the plot have been put in the Bastille.

Mme. d'Orléans is much distressed, but is much more reasonable than Mme. la Duchesse. She says that, as her husband was compelled to adopt such rigorous measures against his brother-in-law, there must have been strong reasons.

There is great discord among the clergy. The bishops are disunited; some are for the pope and the doctrine of the Jesuits; others support the Jansenists. I wish that both sides took more care to live like Christians and die well; leaving disputes to those who find them to their taste. I do not trouble myself about either party.

Cardinals cannot be arrested, but you can exile them. Cardinal de Polignac has therefore received orders to retire to one of his abbeys and stay there. Love turned his head. He was formerly a good friend to my son, but he changed as soon as he attached himself to that little frog. Magny is not yet arrested; he is hiding from convent to convent among the Jesuits. My son showed me a letter that Mme. du Maine had written to Cardinal de Polignac, which was seized among his papers. A most virtuous and estimable person she is, truly! In this fine letter she says: "We go to-morrow to the country; I will arrange the apartments so that your room can be near mine; try to manage as well as last time, and we will give ourselves heart-joy."

PARIS, 1719.

I wrote you that the Duc and Duchesse du Maine were the leaders of the plot; since then the proof of the duke's culpability has been found in a letter to him from Alberoni, in which are these words: "As soon as war is declared, fire all your mines." Nothing can be clearer. They are great wretches.

Though the treason is discovered, all the traitors are not yet known. My son laughs and says: "I hold the head and tail of the monster, but not its body as yet." The Duc and Duchesse du Maine have written on all sides to justify themselves. There is such wickedness and falsehood in what they say that I cannot endure the thought of it. No one can imagine the libels they have spread in the provinces about my poor son; they have also sent them to foreign countries.