Chapter CLXXII: Letter VII: GRIGNAN, July 24, 1691

“Short reckonings make long friends:” I have received all your letters, my dear neighbor; that of May 20, that of June 4, about which you were uneasy, and the last of July 4; with the epistle M. de Nevers sent you from Genoa, and, in short, all the works of this duke, who is the true son of Apollo and the Muses. You ask me if I do not treasure all his productions: indeed I do; I have not lost a single one; they have highly amused us, as well as every one who has passed this way whom we have deemed worthy of them. The last epistle is rather above Paulina’s capacity; but we have had the pleasure of finding ourselves capable of explaining to her what she did not understand. With respect to the description of the dinner, it is suited to the taste of the best guests; and it made M. de Grignan’s, the Chevalier de St. André’s, my son’s, and all our mouths water. I never saw so excellent a repast. I have just placed it among the other wonders of this duke. To conclude the article of letters: when you have received that of the 25th of June, and this, you will have received all.

Let us now come to yours, the beginning of which had nearly brought me to tears. How can I fancy you confined to your bed, afflicted in every limb and every joint of your poor little body; and your nerves so affected that you can neither stir hand nor foot? This is enough to drive us to despair; but to see that all this produces a song upon your melancholy situation, accompanied by another, the most humorous in the world, on a thing which you see daily; you may suppose, my poor cousin, this is a real comfort to our hearts, as it proves that the vital principle is not attacked. This fit of the gout has only given you the blue devils, and made you look forward to futurity under the most melancholy aspect in which it can present itself to you; but this situation, so violent, and so contrary to your disposition, has not had leisure to make any impression on you.

In spite of St. Peter, which is past, and of the predictions of the physicians, a pope is made, and the cardinals will leave the conclave without the event having cost them their lives; on the contrary, they will recover their health and their liberty. It is not the first time that gentlemen of the faculty have erred in judgment. The Duke de Chaulnes has written us a letter by the courier, dated the 15th, which brings the news of the exaltation: he thinks of nothing now but of coming to see us; he will be with us a fortnight; and though the pope[316] be a Neapolitan, he maintains that the affair of the bulls is so well disposed of, that it will be the signal gun for saddling horses and setting out for Grignan; this hope gives us great pleasure, and very much abridges the share I wished to take in all your melancholy calendars; it is at an end, however, my dear cousin; you are cured, you are set out, you are on the point of arriving here. I embrace you a thousand times. Let us talk a little of the table in the embassador’s closet, of the chaos of letters, of the deep abyss of bags, of the confusion of papers, from which, like the infernal regions, when once a poor letter is thrown into it, it never comes out again. It was a miracle, indeed, that mine was found; but it was my daughter’s letter, in which I had written; she had a great inclination to be offended at being thus lost and confounded with the rest; but I appeased her in the best way I could, by assuring her that the embassador read what she wrote to him with the deepest attention, and that it was upon my lines he had not condescended to throw a single glance: and it is the fact; for he said I had not written to him. She replied, “But as it was my letter, why consign it to this chaos?” To this I knew not what to answer; the embassador will think of it, if he pleases. It is true that my poor letters have only the value you give to them, by reading them as you do; for they have their tones, and are unbearable when they are brayed out, or spelled word by word: be this as it may, my dear cousin, you give them a thousand times more honor than they deserve.

[316] Cardinal Pignatelli was elected pope on the 12th of July,
and took the name of Innocent XII.