LIST OF
PHOTOGRAVURE ILLUSTRATIONS.

Madame, Élisabeth-Charlotte, Princess Palatine, Duchesse
d’Orléans [Frontispiece]
By Rigaud (Hyacinthe); in the Brunswick gallery. This is the
picture Madame mentions in her letters; this reproduction is from
the copy which she promised to send to her sister Louise, Countess
Palatine; the original portrait is at Versailles.
Chapter Page
I. Saint-Cloud, Château and Park of [42]
From a photograph by Neurdin, Paris.
II. Fontainebleau. Louis XIV. and Escort, hunting [64]
By Van der Meulen (Adam Franz); painted by order of the king;
in the Louvre.
III. Marie-Anne-Victoire de Bavière, Dauphine, Wife of
Monseigneur, with her Sons [96]
The Duc de Bourgogne carries a lance; the Duc d’Anjou (Philippe
V.) holds a dog; the Duc de Berry is on his mother’s lap; by Mignard
(Pierre); in the Louvre.
IV. Louise de Bourbon, “Mme. la Duchesse” [124]
By Largillière (Nicolas de); Versailles.
V. Marie-Thérèse, Infanta of Spain, Wife of Louis XIV. [154]
By Velasquez (Diego Rodriguez da Silva y); in the Prado gallery,
Madrid.
V. René Descartes [168]
By Franz Halz; in the Louvre.
VI. Marie Adélaïde de Savoie, Duchesse de Bourgogne [182]
Painter’s name not obtained; probably Santerre; in the Royal
palace at Turin; photographed by permission from the original for
this edition.
VII. Madame de Maintenon[216]
Head of the portrait painted for Saint-Cyr by Mignard; now in
the Louvre.
X. Louis XIV. at Marly [300]
By Geuslain (Charles); Versailles.

CORRESPONDENCE OF MADAME,
ÉLISABETH-CHARLOTTE, PRINCESS PALATINE,
MOTHER OF THE REGENT.

INTRODUCTION BY C.-A. SAINTE-BEUVE.

“I am very frank and very natural, and I say all that I have in my heart.” That is the motto that ought to be placed upon the correspondence of Madame, which was chiefly written in German and published from time to time in voluminous extracts at Strasburg and beyond the Rhine. This correspondence, translated by fragments, was made into a volume and called, very improperly, the “Memoirs of Madame.” Coming after other memoirs of the celebrated women of the great century, it ran singularly counter to them in tone, and caused great surprise. Now that the Memoirs of Saint-Simon have been published in full, I will not say that the pages of the chronicle we owe to Madame have paled, but they have ceased to astonish. They are now recognized as good, naïve pictures, somewhat forced in colour, rather coarse in feature, exaggerated and grimacing at times, but on the whole good likenesses. The right method for judging of Madame’s correspondence, and thus of gaining insight to the history of that period, is to see how Madame wrote, and in what spirit; also what she herself was by nature and by education. For this purpose the letters published by M. Menzel in German, and translated by M. Brunet, are of great assistance to a knowledge of this singular and original personage; to understand her properly it is not too much to say that Germany and France must be combined.

Élisabeth-Charlotte, who married in 1671 Monsieur, brother of Louis XIV., was born at Heidelberg in 1652. Her father, Charles-Louis, was that Elector of the Palatinate who was restored to his States by the Peace of Westphalia. From childhood Élisabeth-Charlotte was noted for her lively mind, and her frank, open, vigorous nature. Domestic peace had never reigned about the hearth of the Elector-Palatine; he had a mistress, whom he married by the left hand, and the mother of Élisabeth-Charlotte is accused of having caused the separation by her crabbed temper. The young girl was confided to the care of her aunt Sophia, Electress of Hanover, a person of merit, for whom she always retained the feelings and gratitude of a loving daughter. To her she addressed her longest and most confidential letters, which would certainly surpass in interest those that are published, but M. Menzel states that it is not known what became of them. All that part of the life and youth of Madame would be curious and very useful to recover. “I was too old,” she says, “when I came to France to change my character; the foundations were laid.” While subjecting herself with courage and resolution to the duties of her new position she kept her German tastes; she confesses them and proclaims them before all Versailles and all Marly; and the Court, then the arbiter of Europe, to which it set the tone, would certainly have been shocked if it had not preferred to smile.

From Marly after forty-three years’ residence in France, Madame writes (November 22, 1714): “I cannot endure coffee, chocolate, or tea, and I do not understand how any one can like them; a good dish of sauerkraut and smoked sausages is, to my mind, a feast for a king, to which nothing is preferable; cabbage soup with lard suits me much better than all the delicacies they dote on here.” In the commonest and most every-day things she finds another and a poorer taste than in Germany. “The butter and milk,” she says, after fifty years’ residence, “are not as good as ours; they have no flavour and taste like water. The cabbages are not good either, for the soil is not rich, but light and sandy, so that vegetables have no strength and the cows cannot give good milk. Mon Dieu! how I should like to eat the dishes your cook prepares for you; they would be more to my taste than those my maître-d’hôtel serves up to me.”

But she clung to her own country, her German stock, her “Rhin allemand,” by other memories than those of food and the national cooking. She loved nature, the country, a free life, even a wild one; the impressions of her childhood returned to her in whiffs of freshness. Apropos of Heidelberg, rebuilt after the disasters, and of a convent of Jesuits, or Franciscans, established on the heights, “Mon Dieu!” she cries, “how many times I have eaten cherries on that mountain, with a good bit of bread, at five in the morning! I was gayer then than I am to-day.” The brisk air of Heidelberg is with her after fifty years’ absence; and she speaks of it a few months before her death to the half-sister Louise, to whom she writes: “There is not in all the world a better air than that of Heidelberg; above all, about the château where my apartment is; nothing better can be found.”