The Pretender has been well received in Scotland and proclaimed king; but I cannot tell you more, for we have very little news from England. The Queen of England is so happy in hearing of her son’s safe arrival and good reception. The poor woman is not accustomed to rejoice; her satisfaction has been so great that a fever which she had has passed off. I know from a good source that the pope and the King of Spain furnished the money for the Pretender. The pope gave thirty thousand crowns, and the king three hundred thousand; as for my son, he did not give a penny.
Religion used to be very reasonable in France before the old guenipe reigned here; but she ruined everything and introduced all sorts of silly devotions,—rosaries and such-like. If any persons wanted to reason upon that matter she and the confessor sent them to prison or exiled them. Those two caused all the persecutions that were levelled in France against the poor Reformers and Lutherans. That Jesuit with the long ears, Père La Chaise, began the work in union with the old guenipe, and Père Tellier finished it; it was thus that France has been utterly ruined.
The old woman was implacable, and when she had once taken a dislike to any one it was for life, and that person became the object of a secret persecution that never ceased. I experienced this; she laid many traps for me, which I escaped by the help of God. She was dreadfully weary of her old husband, who was always in her room. Some persons assert that she poisoned Mansard; they say she discovered that Mansard intended that very day to show certain papers to the king which would prove how she had made money from the post without the king’s knowledge. Never in his life did the king hear of this adventure, nor of that of Louvois, because no one was inclined to be poisoned—that kept all tongues respectful.
Long before his death the king was entirely converted and no longer ran after women; when he was young the women ran after him; but he renounced all that sort of life when he imagined that he became devout. The real truth was that the old witch watched him so closely he dared not look at a woman; she disgusted him with society, to have him and govern him alone, and this under pretence of taking care of his soul. She controlled him so well that he even exiled the Duchesse de la Ferté who posed as being in love with him. When that duchess could not see him she had his portrait in her carriage, in order to look at him constantly. The king said she made him ridiculous, and sent her an order to go and live on her estates. It was suspected, however, that the Duchesse de Roquelaire, of the family of Laval, had made a conquest of the king; certainly his Majesty was not angry about her as he was with the Duchesse de la Ferté. Gossip had a great deal to say about this intrigue, but I never put my nose into it.
Paris, 1716.
A Frenchman, a refugee in Holland, used to write to me how the affairs of the Prince of Orange were going. I thought that I should do the king a service in communicating to him what I thus heard; I did so. The king was much obliged and thanked me; but in the evening he said, laughing: “My ministers insist that you are ill-informed; they say there is not a word of truth in what was written to you.” I answered: “Time will show who is best informed, your ministers, or the person who wrote to me; my intentions were good, monsieur.” Some time later, after it was proved that King William had gone to England, M. de Torcy came to me and said that I ought to inform him of the news I received. I replied: “You assured the king that I received false news; on which I ordered that nothing more should be written to me; for I do not like to spread false reports.” He laughed, as he usually did, and said: “Your news is always very good.” To which I answered: “A great and able minister must have surer news than I, for he knows all things.” That evening the king said to me: “You have been ridiculing my ministers.” I replied: “I only returned them what they gave.”