I have often walked about at night in the gallery of the château of Fontainebleau, where they say the ghost of the late king François I. appears; but the good man never did me the honour to appear to me; perhaps he does not think my prayers sufficiently efficacious to call him out of purgatory; and in that he may be right enough.
I was very gay in my youth; that is why they called me in German Rauschen petten Knecht. I remember the birth of the King of England [George I.] as if it had been yesterday. I was a very roguish, inquisitive child. They put a doll in a clump of rosemary and tried to make me believe that it was the child that I was told my aunt was going to have; but just at that moment I heard her scream, which did not agree with the baby in the rosemary bush. I pretended that I believed them, but I slipped into my aunt’s chamber as if I were playing hide and seek with young Bulau and Haxthausen, and hid behind a great screen they had placed beside the chimney next the door. Presently they brought the child to the fireplace to bathe it, and I ran out of my hiding-place. I ought to have been whipped, but in honour of the happy event I was only well scolded.
The late king was so attached to the old customs of the royal family that he would not have allowed any of them to be changed for all the world. Mme. de Fiennes used to say that they clung so to old ways in the royal household that the queen died with a frilled cap on her head such as they tie on children when they put them to bed. When the king wished a thing he never allowed any one to argue against it; the thing he ordered must be done at once without reply. He was too used to “such is our good pleasure” to brook an observation. He was very severe in the etiquette he established about him. At Marly it was quite another thing; there he allowed no ceremony. Neither ambassadors nor envoys were invited to go there, and he never gave audiences; there was no etiquette, and everything went along pell-mell. On the promenades the king made the men wear their hats, and in the salon every one, down to the captains and sub-lieutenants of the foot-guards, was allowed to sit down. That gave me such a disgust for the salon that I never chose to stay there. My son is like all the rest of the family, he wants the things to which he has been accustomed from his youth to go on forever. That is why he cannot part with the Abbé Dubois, though he knows his knavery. That abbé wanted to persuade me, myself, that the marriage of my son was very advantageous for him. I replied: “And Honour, monsieur, what can repair that?” The Maintenon had made great promises to him and also to my son, but, thanks be to God, she did not keep her word to either of them.
Infanta Maria Theresa wife of Louis XIV
We have had few queens in France who have been perfectly happy. Marie de’ Medici died in exile; the mother of the king and Monsieur was miserable as long as her husband lived; and our own queen, Marie-Thérèse, used to say that since she became queen she had never had but one day of true contentment. She was certainly excessively silly, but the best and most virtuous woman on earth; she had grandeur, and she knew well how to hold a Court. She believed all the king told her, good and bad. Her accoutrements were ridiculous; and her teeth were black and decayed, which came, they said, from eating chocolate, and she also ate a great deal of garlic. She was clumsy and short, and had a very white skin; when she neither danced nor walked she looked taller than she was. She ate frequently, and was very long about it, because it was always in little scraps as if for a canary. She never forgot her native land, and many of her ways were Spanish. She loved cards beyond measure, and played at bassette, reversi, and ombre, sometimes at petit prime, but she never won, because she could never learn to play well. While she and the first dauphine lived there was never anything at Court but modesty and dignity. Those who were licentious in secret affected propriety in public; but after the old guenipe began to govern and to introduce the bastards among the royal family everything went topsy-turvy.
The queen had such a passion for the king that she tried to read in his eyes what would please him, and provided he looked at her kindly she was gay all day. She was glad when the king passed the night with her, for being a true Spanish woman she did not dislike that business; whenever it happened she was so gay everybody knew of it. She liked to be joked about it, and would laugh, wink her eyes, and rub her little hands.
She died of an abscess which she had under the arm. Instead of drawing it outside, Fagon, who by great ill-luck was just then her doctor, bled her; that made the abscess break within; the whole of it fell upon the heart, and the emetic which he gave her choked her. The surgeon who bled her said to Fagon: “Monsieur, have you reflected? This will be the death of my mistress.” Fagon replied: “Do as I order you, Gervais.” The surgeon wept and said to Fagon: “Do you compel me to be the one to kill my mistress?” At eleven o’clock he bled her; at twelve Fagon gave her a great dose of emetic, and at three the queen departed for another world. We may indeed say that the happiness of France died with her. The king was much moved, but that old devil of a Fagon did it on purpose, in order to bring about the fortunes of the old guenipe. The king always showed consideration for his wife, and required his mistresses to respect her. He liked her because of her virtue and the sincere attachment she felt for him in spite of his infidelities. He was sincerely afflicted when she died.
Paris, 1720.
One hears of nothing every day but bank-bills. I think it very hard not to see gold. For forty-eight years I have always had fine gold pieces in my pocket, and now there is nothing to be seen but silver money, and that of little value.