Letters of 1695-1714.
To her sister Louise, Comtesse Palatine.
Versailles, 1695.
King James of England is not willing that we should wear mourning for his daughter [Mary]; he has vehemently insisted that nothing of the kind should be done. He is not at all moved by this death, which surprises me, for I should think a man could not forget his children, no matter what wrongs he has against them; blood must surely keep its strength. From the portrait they made me of Prince [King] William, I should not have thought he was so much attached to his wife; and I like him for it.
I am very glad to hear that Charles-Maurice [her half-brother] loves me, though he has never seen me; that is the effect of blood. It is not surprising that I love him, for I saw him come into the world; and besides, I have always retained such respect for his Highness our father that I love all those who are his children. I wish that Charles-Maurice may soon be made a colonel. We die when our time comes; Maurice will not live beyond the period that fate assigns him, whether he stays at Court or goes to war. He had better follow his inclination, for all that is done from liking is better done than when one yields to constraint.
We have here a Comte de Nassau, a very brave man and much respected. He holds a patent from the emperor authorizing him to take the title of prince; but he makes no use of it, for which I think very well of him. Dancing has gone out of fashion everywhere. Here, in France, as soon as the company assemble they do nothing but play lansquenet; that is the game in vogue; even the young people do not care to dance. As for me, I do neither. I am much too old to dance, which I have not done since the death of our father. I never play cards for two reasons: first, I have no money; and next, I don’t like gambling. They play here for frightful sums, and the players are like madmen; one howls, another strikes the table so hard that the room resounds, a third blasphemes in such a way that one’s hair stands on end, and they all seem beside themselves and are terrifying to see.
I beg you to greet for me all our old friends in the Palatinate; I curse this war to-day more than ever. My poor son, who has been seriously ill and is still taking quinine, was engaged in that affair when Maréchal de Villeroy fell upon the rear-guard of the Prince de Vaudemont and put four battalions to flight. Though my son has had the luck to escape a wound, I tremble lest fatigue should bring back his fever. A good peace is much to be desired.
I regard it as great praise that people should say I have a German heart and that I love my country; I shall endeavour, by the grace of God, to deserve that praise to my last day. I have indeed a German heart, for I cannot console myself for what is happening in that unfortunate Palatinate; I cannot think about it; it makes me sad all day. Next Saturday I return, with regret, to Paris, which I think very disagreeable.
There is nothing in the world so miserable as the fate of a Queen of Spain; I know this by the late queen, who used to write me day by day the existence that she led. It is even worse in Portugal, and it shows the truth of the proverb that all is not gold that glitters.
I was too old when I came to France to change my character, the foundations were laid. There is nothing surprising in that; but I should be inexcusable if I were false and did not love the persons for whom I ought to feel an attachment. You have reason to think that I write as I think; I am too frank to write otherwise. The good Duchesse de Guise, cousin of the king and of Monsieur, died five days ago. I have felt much afflicted; she was a worthy, pious woman; we dined together every day. There was only an antechamber between my room and her cabinet. She kept her mind till the last moment, and died tranquilly, without regrets.
Versailles, 1697.
If I had not heard from my aunt that you were going to Holland, I should have been quite surprised at getting your letter from the Hague. My health is now pretty good; as usual, I have driven away the fever by hunting. I have had the satisfaction to do some service to the prisoners who have been brought here. I cannot do much, but I shall spare no pains to be useful to compatriots who may need me.
I remember the Hague perfectly; I always thought it a very agreeable city, but the air is not as good as it is in the Palatinate and everything is so very dear in Holland. King William is not at Loo, but at the head of his army; God grant there may not be a battle, for I can’t help trembling at the thought of it because of my son. The fate of those good people of the Palatinate makes me wretched; but I can do nothing to prevent it. Let us all unite in prayers for peace, for it is indeed very needful.
It is deplorable that the priests have brought it about that Christians are divided one against another. If I had my way, the three Christian religions should form but one; we should not ask what people believed, but whether they lived in accordance with the Gospel, and the priests should preach against those who lead bad lives. Christians ought to be allowed to marry and go to church where they like; and then there would be more harmony than there is now.
I think so well of King William that I would rather have him for a son-in-law than the Emperor of Germany. I can say with truth of my daughter that she has no idea of coquetry or gallantry; in that respect she gives me no anxiety, and I think I shall never have anything to fear; she is not handsome, but she has a pretty figure, a good face, and good feelings. I am convinced that she will stay an old maid, for, according to all appearance, King William will marry the Princess of Denmark. I fancy that the emperor will take the second Princess of Savoie, and the Duc de Lorraine the daughter of the emperor, so that no one will be left for my daughter.
I don’t know if you remember how gay I was in my youth; all that has gone; I have been more than six weeks without laughing even once. The theatre is what amuses me the most. If you knew all that goes on here you would certainly not be surprised that I am no longer gay. Another in my place would have been dead of grief this long while; as for me, I only grow fat upon it.
Saint-Cloud
Saint-Cloud.
I received two weeks ago your letter of May 21, but I could not answer it, for I was not in a state to write, and Mlle. de Rathsamhausen [her lady-of-honour] spells so badly that I do not care to dictate to her.[3] I must tell you what has happened to me. Once a month I go with Monseigneur the dauphin to hunt a wolf. It had rained; the ground was slippery; we had searched for a wolf two hours without finding one, and then started for another point, where we hoped to do better. As we were following a wood-path a wolf sprang up just in front of my horse, which was frightened and reared on its hind legs and slipped and fell over on its right side, and my elbow coming in contact with a big stone was dislocated. They looked for the king’s surgeon who was with the hunt, but could not find him, for his horse had lost a shoe and he had gone to a village to have it put on. A peasant said there was a very skilful barber two leagues off who set legs and arms every day of his life; when I heard he had such experience I got into a calèche and was driven to him—not without very great pain. As soon as he had set my arm I suffered nothing and drove back here at once. My surgeon and Monsieur’s surgeon examined the hurt. I think they were rather jealous that a poor countryman had done the thing so well. They bandaged my arm again and made me suffer beyond measure; my hand swelled up in a horrible manner; I could not move my wrist or lift my hand to my mouth.
It is very true that celibacy is the best condition; the best of men is not worth the devil. Love in marriage is no longer the fashion, and is thought ridiculous. The Catholics here say in their catechism that marriage is a sacrament, but, in point of fact, they live with their wives as if it were no sacrament at all, and, what is worse, nothing is more approved than to see men have gallantries and desert their wives—But not to enlarge upon this subject, I will talk to you about my wolf.
You have heard by this time that peace has been signed with the emperor and the empire; that is a great step towards a general peace. I do not think that war will break out in Poland, for it is not at all certain that our Prince de Conti will go there; he may renounce it, which I think would be much better for him than the crown of Poland; it is a savage, dirty country, and the nobles are too ambitious.
These are dangerous times for young men, and they would do better to go and seek honour in war than stay here doing nothing and leading the most dissolute lives, for which, be it said between you and me, my son has but too great a liking. He says he has taste only for women and not for other debauchery, which is as common here as it is in Italy, and therefore he thinks we ought to praise him and be grateful to him; but his behaviour does not please me at all.
Those who do not know the exact situation of things here imagine that the king and Court are just what they used to be; but everything is changed in a sorry way. If any one who had left the Court at the time of the queen’s death returned here now he would think he had stepped into another world. There is much to be said about this, but I cannot confide it to paper, because all letters are opened and read. My aunt used to say that everybody here below is a demon charged to torment somebody else; and that is very true. We know that all things are the result of the will of God, and happen as He has fixed from all eternity, but the Almighty not having consulted us on what He meant to do, we are in ignorance of the causes of what we see going on about us.
Fontainebleau, 1698.
I have not written to you for several days because I have been to Montargis, whence we have come back here, where we found the courier who brought us the dispensation for my daughter’s marriage. It will take place Monday next and two days later she will start. [Mlle. de Chartres married Léopold, Duc de Lorraine, and was the mother of Francis I., Emperor of Germany, the husband of Maria Theresa.] You can easily imagine that my heart is full, and that I am nearer to weeping than laughing, for my daughter and I have never been separated, and now we are to part for a long time. My eyes are full of tears, but I must hide them; otherwise people would laugh at me, for in this country they do not understand how it is that persons should love their relations. One repents very soon of speaking out one’s thoughts, and that is why I live such a solitary life. You are very happy in being able to laugh still; it is a long time since I have done so, though formerly I used to laugh more than any one. Persons have only to marry in France and the desire to laugh will soon leave them.
The King of England is not, I think, in much of a hurry to be married. That monarch is certainly, on account of his merit, one of the greatest kings that ever wore a crown; but between ourselves, if I were maid or widow and he did me the honour to want to marry me, I would rather pass my life in celibacy than become the greatest queen in the world on condition of taking a husband, for marriage has become to me an object of horror.
What is worse in this country than in England is that all the persons who conduct themselves ill, men and women, devote themselves to politics and seek to intrigue at Court, which leads to much perfidy and deception. In whatever country we live, if we are married we must drive jealousy out of our hearts, for it does no good; we must wash our hands in innocency and keep our conscience pure, although we may have no pleasant intercourse and nothing but long and weary hours of ennui. I do not fret myself now about the way the world goes on; I despise it, and I have little taste for being in society. One hears of nothing just now but tragical events; they have lately condemned five women who killed their husbands; others killed themselves.
Nothing is so rare in France as Christian faith; there is no longer any vice of which persons are ashamed. If the king wanted to punish all those who are guilty of the worst vices he would find no more princes or nobles or servants about him; there would not be a family in France that was not in mourning.
Fontainebleau, 1699.
I receive sometimes very friendly letters from the Queen of Spain [wife of Charles II.]. I am sorry that poor queen is so unhappy. It would be a great blessing for Europe if she could have a child, boy or girl would do, provided it lived; for one does not need to be a prophet to divine that if the King of Spain dies without children a terrible war will arise; all the Powers will claim the succession, and none of them will yield to any of the others; nothing but a war can decide.
I have heard with grief of the conduct of Charles-Maurice in Berlin; if he behaves in that way we shall not continue good friends. I am very angry to know that he is dead-drunk nearly half the day. If I thought that scolding him very severely would correct him I would write to him. It is distressing to think that the only remaining son of our father should be a drunkard.
Marly, 1700.
It is not a mere tale that the King of Morocco has asked in marriage the Princesse de Conti [daughter of Louis XIV. and Louise de la Vallière], but the king repulsed the proposal sharply. That princess was extremely beautiful before she had the small-pox, but her illness has greatly changed her. She still has a perfect figure and charming carriage, and dances admirably; I never saw any engraved portrait that was like her.
I can understand why people go to Rome, like my cousin the Landgrave of Cassel, to see the antiquities, but I cannot imagine that they should go to be present at all those priests’ ceremonies, for nothing is more tiresome. Perhaps some people go for the thirty thousand dames galantes who are said to be there; but those who like such merchandise have only to come to France, where they will find them in abundance. Those who want to repent of their sins need not go to Rome; to repent sincerely in their own homes is quite as profitable. Here no one cares about Rome or the pope; they are quite convinced they can get to heaven without him.
I seldom see Monsieur here [Marly]; we do not dine together; he plays cards all day, and at night we are each in our own room. Monsieur has the weakness to think that when he is overlooked at cards he has ill-luck; so I never assist at his games. He has frightened us very much by having a quartan fever; this is the day it is due to return, but, thanks to God, he feels nothing of it yet, and he is in the salon, playing cards.
All letters entering or leaving France are opened; I know that very well, but it does not trouble me; I continue to write what comes into my head.
To Madame de Maintenon.
Saint-Cloud, June 15, 1701.[4]
If I had not had fever and great agitation, Madame, from the sad employment of yesterday in opening the caskets of Monsieur’s papers, scented with the most violent perfumes, you would have heard from me earlier; but I can no longer delay expressing to you how touched I am by the favours that the king did yesterday to my son, and the manner in which he has treated both him and myself; and as all this is the result of your good counsels, Madame, be pleased to allow me to express my sense of it and to assure you that I shall keep, very inviolably, the promise of friendship which I made to you; I beg you to continue to me your counsels and advice, and not to doubt a gratitude which can end only with my life.
To Louise, Comtesse Palatine.
Versailles, July 15, 1701.
My health is still much weakened; this is the first time for eight days that the fever has left me. Since the blow that struck me I have had eighteen paroxysms of fever, and I thought it was the will of God to end my sad life; but it was not so. I am left with great lassitude and weakness of the legs, which I attribute to the shock of Monsieur’s death; they continued to tremble for twenty-four hours as if from a violent attack of fever. Nothing could have been more dreadful than what I witnessed. At nine o’clock in the evening Monsieur left my room, gay and laughing; at half-past ten they called me, and I found him almost unconscious; but he recognized me and said a few words with much difficulty. I stayed the whole night beside him, and the next morning at six o’clock, when there was no longer any hope, they carried me away unconscious.
I am grateful to you for the share you take in my misfortune, which is dreadful, and I thank you with all my heart. I beg you to let the Queen-dowager of Denmark know how much I am touched that her Majesty has remembered me in my trouble.
I have need to find, in my sad situation, something to divert my thoughts; everything is forbidden to me at present except walking; my greatest comfort is the kindness of the king, of which he continues to give me many proofs. He comes to see me and takes me to walk with him. Saturday was the day when Monsieur was interred, and though I was not present, I wept much, as you can well imagine.
I have every reason to rejoice in the king’s favour, and so has my son, whom the king has made a very great seigneur. I am well pleased for him; we live happily together; he is a good lad with very good feelings.
October, 1701.
My health is now perfect, and to keep it so I drive out as much as I can. All the others hunt daily with the king, and go twice a week to the theatre. I am deprived of those things, as you know, and between ourselves, it is not a little privation to be obliged to forego those two amusements. I walk out often on foot and go a good three miles in the forest; that disperses the melancholy that would otherwise crush me; especially when I hear talk about public affairs of which I had previously never heard a word in all my life. I should be very fortunate if I could understand them as you do, but I never could, and at fifty one is too old to begin to learn; I should only make myself as annoying and irritating as a bed-bug. Apropos of bed-bugs, they nearly ate up the little Queen of Spain on her passage up the Mediterranean in the Spanish galleys. Her people were obliged to sit up with her all night. She arrived a few days ago at Toulon, and went from there by land to Barcelona because, so she wrote me, she could not endure the sea any longer. I would not be in her place; to be a queen is painful in any country, but to be Queen of Spain is worst of all.
I must acknowledge that the death of King James has made me very sad; his widow is in a situation to melt a heart of rock. The good king died with a firmness I cannot describe, and with as much tranquillity as if he were going to sleep. The evening before his death he said: “I forgive my daughter with all my heart for the harm she did me; and I pray God to pardon her, and also the Prince of Orange and all my other enemies.” The Queen of England cannot be consoled for the death of her husband, though she bears her sorrow with Christian resignation. I have nothing new to tell you; I walk and read and write; sometimes the king drives me to the hunt in his calèche. There are hunts every day; Sundays and Wednesdays are my son’s days; the king hunts Mondays and Thursdays; Wednesdays and Saturdays Monseigneur hunts the wolf; M. le Comte de Toulouse, Mondays and Wednesdays; the Duc du Maine, Tuesdays; and M. le Duc, Fridays. They say if all the hunting kennels were united there would be from 900 to 1000 dogs. Twice a week there is a comedy. But you know, of course, that I go nowhere; which vexes me, for I must own that the theatre is the greatest amusement I have in the world, and the only pleasure that remains to me.
You are wrong in supposing that I have ceased to read the Bible; I read three chapters every morning. You ought not to imagine that French Catholics are as silly as German Catholics; it is quite another thing,—one might almost say it is another religion. Any one reads Holy Scripture who chooses. Nobody here thinks the pope infallible, and when he excommunicated Lavardin in Rome everybody laughed and never dreamed of a pilgrimage. There is as much difference in France from the Catholic of Germany as there is from those of Italy and Spain.
Those who wish to serve God in truth and according to His word should read Holy Scripture every day; otherwise we sit in darkness. I am persuaded that good religion is founded on the word of God, and consists in having Jesus Christ in the heart; all the rest is only the prating of priests. Of whatever religion we be, it is only by works that true faith is shown, and only by them can it be judged who does right. To love God and our neighbour is the law and the prophets, as our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us.
I heard yesterday, through a letter from my aunt, the Electress of Brunswick, of the death of our poor Charles-Maurice. I am sincerely afflicted by it, and I pity you from the bottom of my heart. If Charles-Maurice had not loved wine so much he would have been a perfect philosopher. He has paid dear for his fault, for I am sure that drunkenness shortened his life; he could not keep from drinking, and he burnt up his body.
If the Court of France was what it used to be one might learn here how to behave in society; but—excepting the king and Monsieur—no one any longer knows what politeness is. The young men think only of horrible debauchery. I do not advise any one to send their children here; for instead of learning good things, they will only take lessons in misconduct. You are right in blaming Germans who send their sons to France; how I wish that you and I were men and could go to the wars!—but that’s a completely useless wish to have. The higher one’s position in life the more polite we ought to be in order to set a good example to others. It is impossible to be more polite than the king; but his children and grandchildren are not so at all. If I could with propriety return to Germany you would see me there quickly. I love that country; I think it more agreeable than all others, because there is less of luxury that I do not care for, and more of the frankness and integrity which I seek. But, be it said between ourselves, I was placed here against my will, and here I must stay till I die. There is no likelihood that we shall see each other again in this life; and what will become of us after that God only knows.
Versailles, 1704.
There are very few women here who are not coquettes by nature; it is excessively rare to meet any. Before God that is perhaps very reprehensible, but before men it is thought a fair game. The coquettes flatter themselves that, our Lord having shown in Holy Scripture so much charity for persons of their stripe, he will certainly have compassion for them; the cases of Mary Magdalen, of the Samaritan woman, and of the woman taken in adultery make them easy in mind. You must not think that they ever tire of coquetry; they cannot do without it, so to speak, and they never get tired of it. Drunkenness is but too much the fashion among the young women; but just now they are all in a state of complete satisfaction. Nothing is thought of but how to amuse the Duchesse de Bourgogne with collations, presents, fireworks, and other rejoicings:
I have not been able to perform the good work of keeping fast this Lent. I cannot endure fish, and I am quite convinced that we can do better works than spoiling our stomachs by eating too much of it.
Are you simple enough to believe that Catholics have none of the true foundations of Christianity? Believe me, the aim of Christianity is the same in all Christians; the differences that we see are only priests’ jargon, which does not concern honest men. What does concern us is to live well as Christians, to be merciful, and to apply ourselves to charity and virtue. Preachers ought to recommend all that to Christians, and not squabble as they do over quantities of points, as if they understood them; but this, of course, would diminish the authority of those gentlemen, and so they busy themselves with disputes, and not with what is more necessary and most essential.
I have in no way approved of the ill-treatment of the Reformers; but as to that, one must blame politics, which is a subject to be treated of tête-à-tête and not touched upon by way of the post. I shall therefore follow your good example and write of something else.
The jubilee bull has not converted all the abbés, for there are still a goodly number of them in Paris who court the women. I never in my life could understand how any one could fall in love with an ecclesiastic. Neither you nor your sister are coquettes; I can truly say I recognize my blood. What prevents one here from contracting sincere friendships is that one can never be sure of reciprocity; there is so much egotism and duplicity. And so one must either live in a very sad and wearisome solitude, or resign one’s self to many griefs.
Versailles, 1705.
I was never scolded for sleeping in church, and so I have acquired a habit of it which I cannot get rid of. In the mornings I do not go to sleep; but in the evenings, after dinner, it is impossible for me to keep awake. I never sleep at the theatre, but I do, very often, at the opera. I believe the devil cares very little whether I sleep or not in church; sleep is not a sin, but the result of human weakness. I see you are too devout to go to the theatre on Sunday; but I think that visiting is more dangerous than the theatre; for it is difficult in a visit not to say harm of your neighbour, which is a much worse sin than seeing a comedy. I should never approve of going to the theatre instead of going to church; but after having fulfilled one’s duties to God, I think the theatre is less dangerous for a scrupulous conscience than conversation.
Many Frenchwomen, especially those who have been coquettish and debauched, as soon as they grow old and can no longer have lovers, make themselves devout—or, at least, they say they are. Usually such women are very dangerous; they are envious and cannot endure others. But I must stop, my dear Louise; I am sweating in a terrible way. The heat is extraordinary; it is two months since a drop of rain has fallen, and the leaves are frying on the trees.
I know very well what it is to be exposed in hunting to a burning sun; many a time I have stayed with the hounds from early morning till five in the evening, and in summer till nine at night. I come in red as a lobster, with my face all burned; that is why my skin is so rough and brown. No one pays any attention here to the dust; I have seen in travelling such clouds of it that we could not see each other in the coach, and yet the king never ordered the horsemen to keep back. The good night air does no one any harm; at Marly I often walk out by moonlight.
Versailles, 1706.
Amélie [another sister, Comtesse Palatine] writes me that she has answered the king of Prussia, and makes many jokes about it. I would reply to her in the same tone, but since the day before yesterday I have lost all desire to laugh and joke. We received news that, the orders of my son [with the army of Italy] not having been followed, the lines before Turin have been forced; my son has two severe wounds: one in the thigh, but a flesh wound only; the other through the right arm, without the bone being broken. The surgeons assure us there is no danger to life; God grant it! For two days I have done nothing but weep; they tell me he is not in danger, but his sufferings grieve me; my eyes are so swollen and red I cannot see out of them.
The siege of Turin and the catastrophe that has ended it, almost costing me the life of my son, makes me sigh more than ever for peace. I have been so harassed for the last three days that I think I should have lost my mind if the anxiety had lasted longer. I have constantly said that they ought to make those two kings of Spain [she means the claimants of the throne, Philippe V. and the Archduke Charles] wrestle together, and whichever had the strongest wrist should win; such a singular combat to settle the fate of a kingdom would be more Christian than to shed the blood of so many men.
We have here a species of pietists who are what they call quietists; but they are much better than the pietists of Germany; they are not so debauched. The King of Siam, when our king wanted to convert him to Christianity, replied that he thought people could be saved in all religions, and that God, who had willed that the leaves of the trees should be of different colored greens, wished to be worshipped in diverse manners; therefore the King of France ought to continue to serve God in the way to which he was accustomed; while, for himself, he should adore God in his way, and if God wished him to change He would inspire him with the will to do so. I think that king was not far wrong. I believe that a long time will elapse before the last judgment; we have not yet seen Antichrist.
I thank you for the medals you have sent me; but I should like to receive those that are made against France. I already have the most insulting,—those that were struck in the reign of King William. The king and the ministers have them, therefore you need not hesitate to send them to me on the first occasion.[5]
I have received your letters from Heidelberg and Frankfort, and I answered them; but my letters to you, dear Louise, are all in the packet to my aunt which has been detained so long that we are nearly crazy about it. But that is what the all-powerful dame and the ministers succeed in—far better than they do in governing the kingdom.
Versailles, 1709.
Never in my life did I know so gloomy a period. The people are dying of cold like flies. The mills are stopped, and that has forced many to die of hunger. Yesterday they told me a sorrowful story about a woman who stole a loaf of bread from a baker’s shop in Paris. The baker wanted to arrest her; she said, weeping, “If you knew my misery you would not take the loaf away from me; I have three little children all naked; they ask me for bread; I cannot bear it, and that is why I have stolen the loaf.” The commissary before whom they took the woman told her to take him where she lived; he went there, and found the three little children sitting in a corner under a heap of rags, trembling with cold as if they had the ague. “Where is your father?” he asked the eldest. The child answered, “Behind the door.” The commissary looked to see why the father was hiding behind the door, and recoiled with horror—the man had hung himself in despair. Such things are happening daily.
I am very much deserted here, for every one, young and old, runs after favour. The Maintenon cannot endure me, and the Duchesse de Bourgogne likes only what that lady likes. I have done my best to conciliate that all-powerful person, but I cannot succeed in doing so. So I am excluded from everything, and I never see the king except at supper. I can only act according to the will of others. I was less bound when Monsieur was living. I dare not sleep away from Versailles without the king’s permission. It is not wrong, therefore, that I should wish to be with you in our dear Palatinate; but God does not will that here below we should be fully satisfied. You and Amélie are free, but your health is bad; I am lonely, but my health, thank God, is perfect.
You are mistaken if you think that no lamentations are heard here; night and day we hear of nothing else; the famine is so great that children have eaten each other. The king is so determined to continue the war that yesterday he gave up his gold service and now uses porcelain; he has sent every gold thing he has to the mint to be turned into coin.
All that one sees and hears is dreadful; we are living in a very fatal epoch. If one leaves the house one is followed by a crowd of poor creatures who cry famine; all payments are made in notes; there is no coin anywhere; all one’s contentment is destroyed till better days appear.
The old lady who is here in such great favour hates me; I have done my best to obtain her good will, but I cannot succeed; she has vowed to me and to my son an implacable hatred. One must do what is reasonable and walk a straight path: God will see to it all.
But that all-powerful lady has always been against me. In the days of Monsieur his favourites feared that I should tell the king how they pillaged Monsieur, and how they troubled me with their profligate lives, and so they wished to get that lady on their side; and to do so, they told her they knew her life, and that if she was not for them, they would tell all to the king.[6] (I knew from the lady herself that a union existed between them, but she did not tell me its cause, which I learned from a friend of the Chevalier de Lorraine.) She has persecuted me all her life, and she does not trust a hair of my head because she thinks me as vindictive as she is herself—which I am not—and so she tries to keep me away from the king. There is another reason besides: the affection that she has for the Duchesse de Bourgogne. As she knows very well that the king, whom I love and respect much, has no antipathy to me, and that my natural humour does not displease him, she is afraid that he might prefer a woman of my age to so young a princess as the Duchesse de Bourgogne; and that is one reason why she wants to keep me away from the king—which she takes every possible means to do, so that there is no chance of changing matters.
Marly, 1709.
I wish you could be with us here, just to see how beautiful the gardens are; but one ought to be able to walk about them with kind and agreeable people, and not with persons who hate and despise one another mutually,—sentiments that are met with here more frequently than those of friendship. Last Wednesday I went to Paris; every one was in alarm about the bread-famine. As I was going to the Palais-Royal, the people called out to me: “There is a riot; forty persons are killed already.” An hour later the Maréchal de Boufflers and the Duc de Grammont had appeased it all; we went tranquilly to the opera and returned to Versailles on Saturday.
Versailles, June, 1710.
I have to inform you of the marriage of my grand-daughter [Marie-Louise-Élisabeth] to the Duc de Berry. Monday, the king came to my room at Marly and announced to me that he should declare it publicly the next day. I had been told of it the night before, with an express injunction not to breathe it to a living soul. Tuesday I went to Saint-Cloud to congratulate the princess; Wednesday she came to Marly; her mother and I presented her to the king, who kissed her and presented her to her future husband. She will be fifteen in August, and she is already two inches taller than I. The dispensations from Rome have been sent for, and as soon as they arrive the marriage will take place. I own it causes me a most sincere joy.
Versailles, July, 1710.
This afternoon at five o’clock the contract will be signed in the king’s cabinet, and the marriage will take place on the 11th, in the morning, without any pomp; but at night there is to be a grand reception and supper, with the king, of all the royal family. It is a very queer history how this marriage was brought about; but it cannot be written by post; it is to hatred rather than attachment that we owe it; but, at any rate, this marriage is better assorted than that of the Landgrave of Homburg, for the husband is nine years older than the wife, which is much better than when the wife is older than the husband.
Marly, April, 1711.
We have just met with a great misfortune. Monsieur le dauphin [Monseigneur] died on Friday, at eleven o’clock in the evening, just as they thought him out of danger. He first had a putrid fever, which changed into small-pox, to which he succumbed. The king spent the night with him, but forbade us to go there. I went to see Monseigneur’s children and found them in a state that would have melted the heart of stones.[7] The king is extremely affected, but he shows a firmness and a submission to the will of God which I cannot express. He speaks to every one, and gives orders with resignation. What consoles him is that Monseigneur’s confessor assures him that his conscience was in a very satisfactory state; he had taken the communion at Easter and he died in very religious sentiments. The king expresses himself in such a Christian way that it goes to my heart, and I cried all day long yesterday.
Versailles, May, 1711.
I am unworthy to hear good sermons, for I cannot help sleeping; the tones of the preachers’ voices send me off at once. We are here in the greatest grief. I have told you already how poor Monsieur le dauphin died unexpectedly. His illness was dreadful. The Duchesse de Villeroy only spoke to her husband, who had been in the dauphin’s room at Meudon, and she was infected and died of it.
The king is a good Christian, but very ignorant in matters of religion. He has never in his life read the Bible; he believes all the priests and the canting bigots tell him; it is therefore no wonder he goes astray. They tell him he must act in such and such a way; he knows no better, and thinks he will be damned if he listens to other advice than that of his regular counsellors.
The dauphin was not without intelligence; he was quick to seize on all absurdities, his own as well as those of others. He could relate things very amusingly when he chose, but his laziness was such that it made him neglect everything. He would much have preferred an indolent life to the possession of all empires and kingdoms. In his life he never opposed the king’s wishes, and he was as submissive as anybody to the Maintenon. Those who assert that he would have retired from Court had the king announced his marriage to the guenipe did not know him; he had himself a villanous guenipe for mistress, whom it was thought he had married secretly; her name was Mlle. Choin; she is still in Paris. What prevented the old Maintenon from being declared queen were the good reasons given against it to the king by the Archbishop of Cambrai, M. de Fénelon; and that is why she persecuted that good and respectable prelate till his death.
Versailles, June, 1712.
I thank you for the share you take in my grief on account of the death of the great personages whom we have lost,[8] and also on account of the frightful calumnies that are being spread about against my son, who is innocent. The fabricators of those lies are confounded, and now ask pardon: but was it not horrible to invent such tales?
I cannot endure either tea, coffee, or chocolate; what would give me pleasure is good beer-soup; but it cannot be procured here; beer in France is worthless.
I hoped that, the king having taken medicine yesterday, H. M. would not hunt to-day, and that I should thus have time to write you a reasonable letter; but the demon of contretemps, as they say here, has come and put himself against it. We hunted this morning, and I did not get back to dinner till mid-day; I have answered my aunt and written her fourteen sheets, so now I have but little time left before supper.
Happily for me I no longer like cards, for I am not rich enough to risk my whole fortune as other people do, and I have no taste for little stakes. Though I do not play, time does not seem long to me when I am alone in my cabinet. I have quite a fine collection of gold coins and medals; my aunt has given me others in silver and bronze; I have two or three hundred engraved antique stones; also many brass pieces which I like equally; I read with pleasure, and therefore I am never bored, be the weather good or bad; I have always something to do, and I write a great deal. When, in one day, I have written twenty sheets to H. H. the Princess of Wales, ten or twelve to my daughter, twenty in French to the Queen of Sicily [Anne-Marie, Monsieur’s daughter by Henrietta of England] I am so tired that I cannot put one foot before the other.
Marly, May, 1714.
We have lost the poor Duc de Berry, who was only twenty-seven years old, and was stout and so healthy he ought to have lived a hundred years. He shortened his life by his own imprudences—but I don’t want to talk of such sad matters; it makes me sick at heart and does no good.
It is a good thing for me that he had ceased for several years to love me, otherwise I could not be comforted for his loss. I own that at first, and even for some days afterwards, I was greatly moved; but having reflected that if I had died he would only have laughed, I consoled myself promptly.
July, 1714.
I cannot express the grief into which I am plunged by the death of my aunt [Sophia, Electress of Hanover, mother of George I. of England, who had brought Madame up, being the sister of her father]; and I have, besides, the misery of being forced to suppress my sorrow, because the king cannot endure to see sad faces round him; I am obliged therefore to hunt as usual.