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.