The great and noble people were often very badly served by their hordes of servants. Madame de Motteville tells us how the ladies of the Court of Anne of Austria were nourished in the peaceful year 1644, when the Court coffers were yet full.
According to the law of etiquette, the Queen supped in solitary state. Her supper ended, we ate what was left. We ate without order or measure, in any way we could. Our only table service was her wash-cloth and the remnants of her bread. And, though this repast was very ill-organised, it was not at all disagreeable, because it had the advantage of what is called "privacy," and because of the quality and the merit of those who sometimes met there.
The most modern Courts still retain some vestiges of the Middle Ages. Louis XIII. had, or had had, four dwarfs, their salary being three hundred "tournois" or Tours livres. The King paid a man to look after his dwarfs, keep them in order, and regulate their conduct.[9]
To the day of her death, despite her exile and her misery, Marie de Médicis maintained in her service a certain Jean Gassan, who figures in her will as employed in "keeping the parrot."
When a child, Louis XIV. had two baladins. Mademoiselle had a dwarf who did not retire from her service until 1645. The registers of the Parliament (date, 10th May, 1645) contain letters patent and duly verified, by which the King accorded to "Ursule Matton, the dwarf of Mademoiselle, sole daughter of the Duke of Orleans, the power and the right to establish a little market in a court behind the new meat market of Saint Honoré."[10]
Marie de Médicis completed the house and establishment of her granddaughter by giving her, for governess, a person of much virtue, wit, and merit, Madame de Saint Georges, who knew the Court thoroughly. Nevertheless Mademoiselle asserted that she had been very badly raised, thanks to the herd of flattering hirelings who thronged the Tuileries, and who no sooner surrounded her than they became insupportable.
It is a common thing [said she] to see children who are objects of respect, and whose high birth and great possessions are continually the subject of conversation, acquire sentiments of spurious glory. I so often had at my ears people who talked to me either about my riches or about my birth that I had no trouble to persuade myself that what they said was true, and I lived in a state of vanity which was very inconvenient.
While very young she had reached a degree of folly where it displeased her to have people speak of her maternal grandmother, Madame de Guise. "I used to say: 'She is my distant grandmamma; she is not Queen.'"
It does not appear that Madame Saint Georges, that person of so much merit, had done anything to neutralise evil influences.