GASTON, DUKE OF ORLEANS.
FROM A STEEL ENGRAVING.
Madame was furious at what she termed her "dishonour." She wept, abused, menaced, and scolded by turns. But finding that there was no redress, that the marriage was legal, and that further opposition might arouse the vengeance of the King, she gradually cooled down and received her new daughter-in-law with tolerable civility; particularly as the marriage with Mademoiselle de Blois continued the possession of the Palais Royal, with all its pictures, sculptures, and valuables, in the Orléans family, a gift which somewhat served to gild the bitter pill she was called on to swallow.
This marriage did not improve the Duke's conduct or character. He was galled by what he had been forced to do; his temper was soured; his excesses increased. Nor was the Duchess of a disposition to endear herself to any husband. Imperious, luxurious, and bitter-tongued, she always forgot that her mother, Madame de Montespan, was not the wife of her father, and treated the Duke as her inferior. He bore her extravagant pride, and listened to her harangues, reproaches, and taunts (expressed with real eloquence) in silence. Sometimes he called her Madame Lucifer.
With such parents their children grew up in habits of licentiousness, only equalled by the imperial ladies of Old Rome.
The Duchesse de Berry—the eldest of the Regent's daughters—kept her Court at the Luxembourg with regal pomp. She received embassadors seated on a throne, surmounted by a canopy sprinkled by the lilies of France. But she did not think it beneath her dignity to do the honours of certain petits soupers at the Palais Royal—too well known to need further mention here.
Her sister, Mademoiselle de Valois, was as remarkable for her beauty as for her lack of virtue.
Mademoiselle d'Orléans—third daughter of the Regent—was, if possible, more wanton than her sisters. To the eternal disgrace of the Church she was elected Abbess of Chelles. "Tel père, tel fils," says the proverb.