The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Correspondence of Madame, Princess Palatine, Mother of the Regent; of Marie-Adélaïde de Savoie, Duchesse de Bourgogne; and of Madame de Maintenon, in Relation to Saint-Cyr, by Charlotte-Elisabeth, duchesse d’ Orléans; Marie Adelaide, of Savoy, Duchess of Burgundy; and Madame de Maintenon, Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

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THE CORRESPONDENCE
OF
MADAME PRINCESS PALATINE,
MARIE-ADÉLAÏDE DE SAVOIE,
AND
MADAME DE MAINTENON.

VERSAILLES EDITION

Limited to Eight Hundred Numbered Sets, of which
this is
No. ——

“[Madame]”

THE CORRESPONDENCE
OF
MADAME, PRINCESS PALATINE,
MOTHER OF THE REGENT;
OF
MARIE-ADÉLAÏDE DE SAVOIE,
DUCHESSE DE BOURGOGNE;
AND OF
MADAME DE MAINTENON,
IN RELATION TO SAINT-CYR.

PRECEDED BY INTRODUCTIONS FROM C.-A. SAINTE-BEUVE.

Selected and Translated
BY
KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY.

BOSTON:
HARDY, PRATT & COMPANY.
1899.

Copyright, 1899,
By Hardy, Pratt & Company.
All rights reserved.

University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF
PHOTOGRAVURE ILLUSTRATIONS.

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.”

In Germany, on the banks of the Neckar and the Rhine, Élisabeth-Charlotte enjoyed the picturesque sites, her rambles through the forests, Nature left to herself, and also the spots of bourgeois plenty amid the wilder environment. “I love trees and fields more than the finest palaces; I like a kitchen garden better than a garden with statues and fountains; a brook pleases me a great deal more than sumptuous cascades; in a word, all that is natural is infinitely more to my taste than works of art or magnificence; the latter only please at first sight; as soon as one is accustomed to them they fatigue, and we care no more about them.” In France she was particularly fond of residing at Saint-Cloud, where she enjoyed Nature with greater liberty. At Fontainebleau she often walked out on foot and went a league through the forest. On her arrival in France and first appearance at Court, she told her physician when presented to her that “she did not need him; she had never been bled or purged, and when she did not feel well she always walked six miles on foot, which cured her.” Mme. de Sévigné who relates this, seems to conclude, with the majority of the Court, that the new Madame was overcome with her grandeur and spoke like a person who is not accustomed to such surroundings. Mme. de Sévigné is mistaken; Madame was in no degree overcome by her greatness. She felt herself born for the high rank of Monsieur’s wife, and would have felt in her right place if higher still. But Mme. de Sévigné though she herself walked with pleasure in her woods at Livry and her park des Rochers, did not divine the proud young girl, so brusque and wild, who ate with delight her bit of bread and cherries plucked from the trees at five in the morning on the hills of Heidelberg.

Madame’s marriage was not made to please her. In France this has been concealed; in Germany it was said quite plainly. Her father, the Elector, hoped by this alliance to buy the safety of his dominions, always threatened by the French. Like a pious daughter she obeyed; but she could not refrain from saying: “I am the political lamb, about to be sacrificed for my country.” The lamb, after we once know her, seems a singular term to choose for so vigorous a victim; but the comparison is just, all the same, so tender and good was the heart within her.

The rôle that Madame conceived for herself in France was that of preserving her native country from the horrors of war, and of being useful to it in the different schemes which agitated the Court of France and might in the end overthrow it. In this she failed; and the failure was to her a poignant grief. She was even made the innocent cause of fresh disasters to the land she loved when, on the death of her father and her brother (who left no children), Louis XIV. set up a claim to the Palatinate on her account. Instead of bringing pledges and guarantees of peace, she found herself a pretext and a means for war. The devastation and the too famous incendiarism of the Palatinate which the struggles of ambition brought about caused her inexpressible grief. “When I think of those flames, shudders run over me. Every time I try to go to sleep I see Heidelberg on fire, and I start up in bed, so that I am almost ill in consequence.” She speaks of this incessantly, and bleeds and weeps for it after many years. For Louvois she retained an eternal hatred. “I suffer bitter pain,” she writes thirty years later (November 3, 1718), “when I think of all that M. de Louvois burned up in the Palatinate; I believe he is burning terribly in the other world, for he died so suddenly he had no time to repent.”

Madame’s virtue in this and other conjunctures was in being faithful to France and to Louis XIV., all the while torn by distress within her secret self. She never ceases to interest herself in the fate of her unhappy country, and in its resurrection after so many disasters. “I love that prince,” she said of the Elector of another branch which was reigning in 1718, “because he loves the Palatinate. I can easily imagine how pained he was when he saw how little remained in the ruins of Heidelberg; the tears come into my eyes when I think of it, and I am so sad.” Nevertheless, she regrets the religious bickerings and persecutions introduced into the country, and her own powerlessness to intervene for the protection of those who are persecuted. “I see but too plainly now,” she writes in 1719, “that God did not will that I should accomplish any good in France, for, in spite of my efforts, I have never been able to be useful to my native country. It is true that when I came to France it was purely in obedience to my father, my uncle, and my aunt, the Electress of Hanover; my inclination did in nowise bring me here.” Thus, in the marriage, apparently so brilliant, which she contracted with the brother of Louis XIV. Madame cared for one thing only, namely, to serve and protect her German land from French policy; and on that very side where politics (to which she was always a stranger) touched her most, she had the grief of failing.

When the marriage of Élisabeth-Charlotte was negotiated, it became a question of converting her. The erudite and witty Chévreau, who was at the Court of the Elector Palatine in the capacity of councillor, flattered himself that he contributed to that result by daily interviews with her of four hours in length for three weeks. One of the orators who eulogized Madame at the time of her death, her almoner (the Abbé de Saint-Géri de Magnas), said as to this: “When asked in marriage for Monsieur by Louis XIV. the principal condition was that she should embrace the Catholic religion. Neither ambition nor levity had any share in this change; the respect and tenderness she felt for Mme. la Princesse Palatine, her aunt, who was Catholic, prevented her from refusing to be instructed. She listened to Père Jourdain, a Jesuit. Born with the rectitude which distinguished her all her life, she did not resist the truth. Her abjuration was made at Metz.”

Madame was, in truth, perfectly sincere in her conversion; nevertheless, she carried into it something of her freedom of mind and her independence of temper. “On my arrival in France,” she says, “they made me hold conferences about religion with three bishops. All three differed in their beliefs; I took the quintessence of their opinions and formed my own.” In this catholic religion, thus defined in the rough, which she believed and practised in perfect good faith, there remained traces and several of the habits of her early faith. She continued to read the Bible in German. She mentions that at that period in France scarcely any one, even among the devout, read Holy Scripture. The translations recently made of it had led to such discussions and bitter quarrels that the ecclesiastical authority intervened and forbade the reading of them; which has ever since remained a rarity in our country. Madame was therefore a notable exception when, in her plan of life, she gave a great and regular place to meditation on the Holy Book. She selected three days in the week for that salutary practice. “After my son’s visit,” she writes (November, 1717), “I sat down to table, and after dinner I took my Bible and read four chapters of the book of Job, four Psalms, and two chapters of Saint John, leaving the other two till this morning.” And she might have written the same thing on each of her appointed days. On one occasion she was singing unconsciously the Calvinist psalms, or the Lutheran canticles (for she mixed them up), while walking alone in the Orangery at Versailles, when a painter who was at work on a scaffolding came down hurriedly and threw himself at her feet, saying with gratitude: “Is it possible, Madame, that you still remember our Psalms?” The painter was a reformer and afterwards a refugee; she relates the little story very touchingly.

She had nothing of the sectarian spirit. She blamed Luther for wishing to make a separate Church; he ought to have confined himself, she thought, to attacking abuses. She retained from him and from other reformers, in spite of her conversion, a habit of invective against religious Orders of all kinds; and on this subject she bursts into tirades which are less those of a woman than of a pedant of the sixteenth century or some doctor emancipated from the rue Saint-Jacques. Gui Patin in a farthingale could not have expressed himself differently. She corresponded with Leibnitz, who assured her that she wrote German “not badly;” which pleased her much, for she could not endure, she says, to see Germans despising and ignoring their mother tongue. The letters that she wrote to Leibnitz would be precious could they some day be recovered and published. She may have gladly borrowed from that illustrious philosopher his idea of an approach and fusion, a reconciliation, in short, between the principal Christian communities, for she renders it, rather brusquely as her manner was, when she says: “If they followed my advice all the sovereigns would give orders that among all Christians, without distinction of beliefs, people were to abstain from insulting expressions, and that each and all were to believe and practise as they saw fit.” In the midst of that Court of Louis XIV., which was so unanimous as to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, she retained the most inviolable ideas of tolerance. “It is not showing themselves in any way Christian,” she said, “to torture people for religious reasons, and I think it monstrous; but when one examines things to the bottom we find that religion is only a pretext; all is done from policy and selfish interests. They are serving Mammon, and not God.”

Later, she humanely intercedes with her son, the regent, to release from the galleys the Reformers who had been sent there. But as it is in Madame’s temperament to exaggerate everything, even her own good qualities, and to introduce a sort of incoherence into her efforts, she goes far beyond her object when she expresses the wish that she may see in the galleys, in the place of such poor innocents, those who she thinks have persecuted them, and also other monks, especially the Spanish monks, who resisted to the last in Barcelona the accession of Louis XIV.’s grandson. “They preached in all the streets that no one should surrender; and if I had my way those rascals would have gone to the galleys in place of the poor Reformers who are languishing there.” That is Madame—in all her goodness of heart, extravagance of language, and her frank, sincere religion of a mixed nature.

When she arrived in France at the age of nineteen no one expected all this. The Court was filled with memories and regrets for the late Madame, the amiable Henrietta, snatched away in the bloom of her charm and grace. “Alas!” cries Mme. de Sévigné, speaking of the new-comer, “alas! if this Madame could only represent to us her whom we have lost!” In place of a blithesome fairy and a being of enchantment, what was it that suddenly appeared before them?

“Madame,” says Saint-Simon, “was a princess of the olden time; attached to honour, virtue, rank, grandeur, and inexorable as to their observances. She was not without intellect; and what she saw she saw very well. A good and faithful friend, trusty, true, and upright; easy to prejudice and shock; very difficult to bring back from prejudice; coarse, and dangerous in her public outbursts; very German in her habits; frank, indifferent to all propriety and all delicacy for herself and for others; sober, solitary, and full of notions. She loved dogs and horses, hunting and theatres passionately, and was never seen except in full dress or in a man’s wig and riding-habit.”

He concludes his portrait admirably in these words: “The figure and rusticity of a Swiss, but capable withal of a tender and inviolable friendship.”

Introduced at Court by her aunt, the illustrious Princess Palatine, Anne of Gonzaga, in nothing was she in keeping with it,—neither in spirit, nor in the gifts of insinuation and conciliatory conduct, nor in caution. Succeeding the first Madame, she seemed even farther aloof from it, more completely a contrast in manners, in the quality and turn of her thoughts, in delicacy, in short, in everything. Madame, throughout her life, was, and must necessarily have been, the contrary of many things and many persons about her; she was original, at any rate, and in all ways Herself.

It seems an irony of fate that gave as second wife to Monsieur, that prince so weak and so effeminate, a woman who in tastes was far more like a man, and who always regretted she was not born a boy. Madame gayly relates how, in her youth, feeling her vocation as a cavalier very strongly, she was always expecting some miracle of Nature in her favour. With this idea she devoted herself as much as she could to all manly exercises and perilous leaping. She cared much more for swords and guns than for dolls. But above all she proves how little of a woman’s nature was in her by the want of delicacy, or, to speak plainly, the lack of modesty in what she says. She is honesty itself, virtue, fidelity, honour; but also, at times, indecency and coarseness personified. She speaks of everything indiscriminately, like a man, is never disgusted by any language, and never goes by four roads when she has to express something which would be difficult and embarrassing to any one but herself. Contrary to the nature of women, she has no desire to please, and no coquetry. Being asked one day why she never glanced into a mirror in passing it, “Because,” she replied, “I have too much self-love to like to see how ugly I am.” The fine portrait by Rigaud gives us a perfect likeness of her in her old age, portly, fat, a double chin and red cheeks, with dignity of carriage nevertheless, and a proud bearing, but an expression of kindness in the eyes and smile.[1] She herself was pleased at times to record her ugliness; one might even suppose that she valued it.

“It is no matter whether one is handsome or not; a fine face changes soon, but a good conscience is always good. You must remember very little of me if you do not rank me among the ugly ones; I have always been so, and I am more so now because of the small-pox. My waist is monstrous in size; I am as square as a cube; my skin is red, mottled with yellow; my hair is getting gray; my nose is honeycombed with the small-pox, and so are my cheeks; I have a large mouth and bad teeth; and there’s the portrait of my pretty face.”

Certainly no one was ever ugly with more spirit and light-heartedness. Occasionally there slips in beneath Madame’s pen and her expressions a natural vein of Rabelais and the grotesque. She fills in that way a unique corner in the Court of Louis XIV. Knowing well what was due to her rank and never departing from it, there are many occasions when she is incongruous with it and violates decorum.

It was perhaps by this naïve brusqueness, and also by her solid qualities as an honest woman (I was going to say an honest man), that she pleased Louis XIV., so that between herself and him there was formed a friendship which was not without its singularity, and which at first sight seems surprising. Mme. de Sévigné, in a letter to her daughter, seems to think that Madame felt for Louis XIV. (as the preceding Madame had done) an inclination that was more or less romantic, and which affected her without her admitting to herself exactly what it was. There is a little too much that is far-fetched in all this. In general, as I have already remarked, Mme. de Sévigné understands Madame very little, and does not give herself the trouble to seek the meaning of a nature so little French. When she hears that the princess fainted with grief at the sudden news of the death of her father, the Elector Palatine, Mme. de Sévigné jests about it thus: “On this, Madame began to cry and weep and make a strange noise; they said she fainted, but I do not believe it; she seems to me incapable of that sign of weakness. All that death could do would be to sober her spirits,”—fixer ses esprits, because ses esprits (in the language of the physics of the day) were always in movement and great agitation.

But let us leave for a moment such French pleasantry and this facility for trifling with everything and over-refining all things. Madame, married in so sad and hapless a manner, and with whom one had only to talk, it was said, to be disgusted at once with the painful conditions of marriage,—Madame was not the woman to fall back upon romance to console her for reality. Thrown into the midst of a brilliant but false Court, full at that time of gallantry and pleasures which merely covered ambitions and rivalries, she distinguished with an instinct of good sense and a certain pride of race the person to whom she could attach herself in the midst of all these people, and she turned with her natural uprightness to the most honest man among them, namely, to Louis XIV. himself. A Jesuit, who pronounced a funeral oration over Madame, Père Cathalan, has said on this subject all that was best to say. In the kingdom at that time was a king who was worthy of being one; with the good qualities we know well, combined with defects which every one about him sought to favour and encourage; a king who was essentially a man of merit, “always master and always king, but more of an honest man and Christian than he was master or king.”

“It was this merit that touched her,” says Père Cathalan, very truly. “A taste for, and, if I may so express myself, a sympathy of greatness attached Madame to Louis XIV. Inward affinities make noble attachments of esteem and respect; and great souls, though the features of their greatness may differ, feel, and resemble one another. She esteemed, she honoured, shall I venture to say she loved that great king because she was great herself. She loved him when he was greater than his fortunes; she loved him still more when he was greater than his sorrows. We saw her giving to the dying monarch her bitter tears, giving them again to his memory, seeking him in that superb palace so filled with his presence and his virtues, saying often how she missed him, and feeling always the wound of his death,—a sentiment which the glory of her son, the regent, could never take away.”

Madame was agreeable to Louis XIV. by her frankness, her open nature; she amused him with her repartees and her lively talk; she made him laugh with all his heart, for (a rare thing at Courts) she liked joy for joy’s sake. “Joy is very good for the health,” thought she; “the silliest thing is to be sad.” She broke the monotony of Court ceremony, the long silent meals, the slow minuets of all kinds. What would have been incongruous in others had a certain spice in her; she had her privileges. “When the king dislikes to say a thing directly to any one, he addresses his speech to me; he knows very well that I don’t constrain myself in conversation, and that diverts him. At table he is obliged to talk with me because nobody else will say a word.”

She was not so inferior to the king as might be thought; or rather she was not inferior to him at all except in politeness, in moderation, in the spirit of consistency and sobriety. In certain respects she judged him with much intelligence, and with freer and broader good sense than he was capable of himself; she thought him ignorant in many ways, and she was right. What she valued most in him was his uprightness of feeling, and the accuracy of his coup-d’œil when left to himself; also the quality of his mind, the charm of his intercourse, the excellent expression of his thoughts,—it was, in short, a certain loftiness of nature which attracted and charmed her in Louis XIV. She aided more than any other in consoling him and diverting his mind after the death of the Duchesse de Bourgogne; she went to him every evening at the permitted hour, and she saw that he was pleased with her company. “There is no one but Madame who does not leave me now,” said Louis XIV. “I see that she is glad to be with me.” Madame has ingenuously expressed the sort of open and sincere affection that she felt for Louis XIV. by saying: “If the king had been my father I could not have loved him more than I did love him, and I had pleasure in being with him.” When the king’s health declined and he neared his last hour, we find Madame laying bare her grief in her letters; she, whose son was about to become regent, she dreads more than any one the change of reign. “The king is not well,” she says, August 15, 1715, “and it troubles me to the point of being half ill myself; I have lost both sleep and appetite. God grant I may be mistaken! but if what I fear should happen it would be for me the greatest of misfortunes.” She relates the last scenes of farewell with true and visible emotion. The little good that has been done in the final years of that long reign she attributes to Louis XIV.; and all that was bad she imputes to her whom she considers an evil genius and the devil personified,—to Mme. de Maintenon.

And here we come to Madame’s great antipathy, to what in her is almost unimaginable prejudice, hatred, and animosity so violent that they become at times comical. And truly, if Madame at a given moment had really been in love with Louis XIV., and if she had hated in Mme. de Maintenon the rival who supplanted her, she could not have expressed herself otherwise. But there is no need of that sort of explanation for a nature so easy to prejudice, so difficult to placate, and so wholly in opposition and contrast to the point of departure and proceedings of Mme. de Maintenon. Hers were antipathies of race, of condition, of temperament, which long years passed in the presence, the continual sight, the rigid restraint of their object only cultivated, secretly fomented, and exasperated. Who has not seen such long-suppressed enmities which explode when an opening is made for them?

Madame, pre-eminently princess of a sovereign house, who never, with all her natural human qualities and her free and easy ways, forgot the duties of birth and grandeur, she of whom it was said, “No great personage ever knew her rights better or made them better felt by others,”—Madame held nothing in so much horror and contempt as misalliances. The gallery at Versailles long echoed with the resounding blow she applied to her son on the day when, having consented to marry the natural daughter of Louis XIV., he approached his mother according to custom, to kiss her hand. Now of all misalliances what could be greater or more inexcusable to her eyes than that which placed Mme. de Maintenon beside Louis XIV.?

Madame, natural, frank, letting her feelings willingly escape her, liking to pour them out, often in excess beyond themselves and observing no caution, could not away with the cold procedure, prudent, cautious, mysterious, polite, and unassailable, of a person to whom she attributed a thousand schemes blacker and deeper than those of hell.

She disliked her for little things and disliked her for great ones. She supposed that it was Mme. de Maintenon who, in concert with Père de La Chaise, had plotted and carried through the persecution of the Reformers; in this she was not only human, but she found herself once more a little of a Calvinist or a Lutheran with a touch of the old leaven; she thought close at hand what the refugees in Holland were writing from afar. She believed she saw in Mme. de Maintenon a Tartuffe in a sage-coloured gown. And besides—another grievance almost as serious!—if there was no longer any etiquette at Court, if ranks were no longer preserved and defined, Mme. de Maintenon was the cause of it.

“There is no longer a Court in France,” she writes, “and it is the fault of the Maintenon, who, finding that the king would not declare her queen, was determined there should be no more great functions, and has persuaded the young dauphine [the Duchesse de Bourgogne] to stay in her, Mme. de Maintenon’s rooms, where there is no distinction of rank or dignity. Under pretext of its being a game, the old woman has induced the dauphine and the princesses to wait upon her at her toilet and meals; she has even persuaded them to hand her the dishes, change her plates, and pour what she drank. Everything is topsy-turvy, and none of them know their right place nor what they are. I have never mixed myself up in all that: when I go to see the lady I place myself close to her niche in an armchair, and I never help her either at her meals or her toilet. Some persons have advised me to do as the dauphine and the princesses do, but I answer: ‘I was never brought up to do servile things, and I am too old to play childish games.’ Since then no one has said anything more about it.”

I should never end if I enumerated all the reasons by which Madame brought herself, gradually and insensibly, to a species of mania which seizes her whenever she has to speak of Mme. de Maintenon, for there are no terms that she does not employ about her. On this subject she drops into whatever the grossest popular credulity could imagine in its days of madness; she sees in Mme. de Maintenon, even after the death of Louis XIV. and while buried at Saint-Cyr, a monopolist of wheat, a poisoner expert in the art of a Brinvilliers, a Gorgon, an incendiary who sets fire to the château de Lunéville. And after she has exhausted everything, she adds: “All the evil that has been said of this diabolical woman is still below the truth.” She applies to her an old German proverb: “Where the devil can’t go himself he sends an old woman.” Saint-Simon, inflamed as he is, pales beside this fabulous hatred, and has himself told us the secret of it.

One day, on a memorable occasion, Madame found herself humiliated before Mme. de Maintenon, forced to admit a wrong she had done her, to make her excuses before witnesses, and to say she was gratefully obliged to her. This happened on the death of Monsieur (June, 1701). Madame, who at that serious crisis had everything to obtain from the king both for herself and for her son (and did in fact obtain it), made the effort to lay her dignity aside and address herself to Mme. de Maintenon. The latter went to see her, and in presence of the Duchesse de Ventadour as witness, she represented to Madame, after listening to her, that the king had much reason to complain of her, but was willing to overlook it all. Madame, believing herself quite safe, protested her innocence; Mme. de Maintenon, with great self-possession, allowed her to speak to the end, and then drew from her pocket a letter, such as Madame wrote daily to her aunt the Electress of Hanover, in which she spoke in the most outrageous terms of the relations between the king and Mme. de Maintenon. We can imagine that Madame, at the sight, nearly died upon the spot.

When the name of the king was laid aside Mme. de Maintenon began to speak on her own account, and to answer Madame’s reproaches for having changed in her sentiments towards her. After allowing Madame, as before, to say all that she had to say and to commit herself to a certain extent, she suddenly quoted to her certain secret words particularly offensive to herself, which she had known and kept on her heart for ten years,—words that were said by Madame to a princess, then dead, who had repeated them, word for word, to Mme. de Maintenon. At the fall of this second thunderbolt Madame was turned into a statue, and there was silence for some moments. Then followed tears, cries, pardon, promises, and a reconciliation, which, being founded on the cold triumph of Mme. de Maintenon and the inward humiliation of Madame, could not of course last long.

It was soon after this scene and during the very short time that the renewed friendship lasted that Madame wrote to Mme. de Maintenon the following letter:—

Wednesday, June 15, 11 in the morning.

If I had not had fever and great agitation, Madame, from the sad employment of yesterday, in opening the caskets containing Monsieur’s papers, scented with the most violent perfumes, you would have heard from me earlier; but I can no longer delay expressing to you how touched I am by the favours that the king did yesterday to my son, and the manner in which he has treated both him and myself; and as all this is the result of your good counsels, Madame, be pleased to allow me to express my sense of it, and to assure you that I shall keep, very inviolably, the promise of friendship which I made to you; I beg you to continue to me your counsels and advice, and not to doubt a gratitude that can end only with my life.

Élisabeth Charlotte.

Proud as Madame was, there was nothing for her, after such a step and such a reconciliation so painful to the core, but to become henceforth the intimate and cordial friend of Mme. de Maintenon, or her implacable enemy. The latter sentiment prevailed. In spite of efforts which may have been for a time sincere, the conditions and the repugnances were too strong; antipathies rose up once more and carried all before them.

Madame deserves consideration by more than one claim, and especially because, having written much, her testimony stands and is invoked in many cases. When the present edition of letters and fragments of letters by M. Brunet is exhausted, why should he not undertake to form a complete collection, leaving nothing out that could enrich and enlighten it on the German side, and adding only such notes and French erudition as may be strictly necessary? We should then have, not exactly an historical document added to so many others, but a great chronicle of manners and morals, a fiery social gossip, by one whom we may call the Gui Patin or the Tallemant des Reaux of the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. We should thus gain a vivid, witty, and ruthless book, which would make a pendant to Saint-Simon on more than one ground.

Madame and Saint-Simon have this in common—they were two honest souls at Court, honest souls whom indignation easily roused; often passionate, prejudiced, and at such times ferocious and pitiless for the adversary. Saint-Simon—need it be said?—has over Madame all the superiority of a genius expressly made to sound and fathom hearts, and to bring back living descriptions, which he gives us in strokes of flame. Madame, often credulous, looking elsewhere, mixing things up and little critical in her judgments, nevertheless sees well what she does see, and renders it forcibly, with a violence which, though little conformed to French taste, is none the less imprinted on the memory. They knew each other and esteemed each other. They had, without suspecting it, the same idiosyncrasies, which they observed, reciprocally, in each other; one was astride of her rank as princess and ever on the qui-vive lest it should not be sufficiently respected; the other, as we know, was intractable and even fanatical on the chapter of dukes and peers.

Saint-Simon has spoken of Madame with truth and justice, as of a manly nature somewhat in keeping with his own. All that we read in Madame’s letters, in which she declares herself to every eye, is only a sort of demonstration and commentary of Saint-Simon’s judgment upon her.

Madame was naturally just, humane, compassionate. She was very anxious about her debts and her creditors, which the great of the earth are not apt to be, and it was noticed that she was never easy unless she had secured their payment,—“forestalling demands, sometimes wishes, and always impatience or complaints.” The letters she writes during the terrible winter of 1709 breathe pity for the poor, who “are dying of cold like flies.” No princess ever had more consideration for those who surrounded her and served her; “she preferred sometimes to deprive herself of necessary attentions, rather than require them when inconvenient to others.” She was what is called a good mistress, and the nearer her people came to her, the more they regretted her. “Saint-Cloud,” she wrote in the autumn of 1717, “is only a house for summer; many of my people have to lodge in rooms without fireplaces; they cannot pass the winter here, or I should be the cause of their deaths, and I am not hard enough for that; the sufferings of others make me pitiful.”

Once only was she pitiless; but she was wounded then in her tenderest spot. Mme. de Maintenon had imported from Strasburg (expressly to annoy me, thought Madame) two girls of equivocal birth who called themselves Comtesses Palatine and whom she placed in the suite of her nieces. The first dauphine (Monseigneur’s wife, a Princess of Bavaria) spoke of this to Madame, weeping, but not daring to resent an affront which was aimed at both. “Let me settle that,” replied Madame. “I’ll manage it; for when I am right nothing frightens me.” The next day she arranged an accidental meeting in the park with one of the two self-styled Comtesses Palatine, and treated her in such a manner (the astounding terms have been preserved) that the poor girl was taken ill, and finally died of it. Louis XIV. contented himself with saying to Madame, “It is not safe to meddle with you in the matter of your family—life depends upon it.” To which Madame replied, “I don’t like impostors.” And she never felt the slightest regret for what she had done. The trait is characteristic in a nature that was otherwise essentially kind. All vehement passion easily becomes cruel when face to face with an object that irritates and braves it. In this case the execution performed by Madame appeared to her under the form of a rigorous duty of honour.

The life that Madame led at the Court of France varied, necessarily, during the fifty and one years that she spent there; she could not live at the age of sixty as she had done at twenty. But at all times, before and after the death of Monsieur, she had managed to make for herself a retreat and a sort of solitude. The exaggerated and incongruous sides of Madame’s nature being now sufficiently visible and well known, I desire to neglect nothing that will show the firm and elevated parts of her soul. From Saint-Cloud June 17, 1698, she writes thus:—

“I do not need much consolation in the matter of death; I do not desire death, neither do I dread it. There is no need of the Catechism of Heidelberg to teach us not to be attached to this world; above all in this country where all things are so full of falseness, envy, and malignity, where the most unheard-of vices are displayed without reserve. But to desire death is a thing entirely against nature. In the midst of this great Court I live retired, as if in solitude; there are very few persons with whom I have frequent intercourse; I am whole, long days alone in my cabinet, where I busy myself in reading and writing. If any one pays me a visit I see them for only a few moments; I talk of rain and fine weather or the news of the day; and after that I take refuge in my retreat. Four times a week I send off my regular letters: Monday, to Savoie; Wednesday, to Modena; Thursday and Sunday I write very long letters to my aunt in Hanover; from six to eight o’clock I drive out with Monsieur and my ladies; three times a week I go to Paris, and every day I write to my friends who live there; I hunt twice a week; and this is how I pass my time.”

When she speaks of solitude we see it is a Court solitude and much diversified. Still it was remarkable that a woman of so grand a station and a princess should spend so many hours daily alone in her cabinet in company with her desk.

After the death of Monsieur, Madame could live more to her liking. She regretted being obliged to dismiss her maids-of-honour, whose youth and gayety amused her; but she gave herself a compensation after her own heart, by taking to herself, without official title, two friends, the Maréchale de Clérembault and the Comtesse de Beuvron, both widows, whom Monsieur had dismissed with aversion from the Court of the Palais-Royal, but to whom Madame had ever remained faithful in absence. They were the “friends in Paris,” to whom she wrote continually. Becoming free herself, she wanted them near her, and henceforth enjoyed, almost as a simple private person, that united constant friendship in which she trusted.

Hunting was long one of Madame’s greatest pleasures, or rather passions. I have said that while a child at Heidelberg she gave herself up to all manly exercises. Her father, however, forbade her to hunt or to ride on horseback. It was in France, therefore, that she served her apprenticeship, and her impetuosity often made it dangerous. Twenty-six times was she thrown from her horse, without being frightened or discouraged. “Is it possible,” she says, “that you have never seen a great hunt? I have seen more than a thousand stags taken, and I have had bad falls; but out of twenty-six times that I have been thrown from my horse I never hurt myself but once, and then I dislocated my elbow.”

The theatre was another passion, which, in her, was derived from intelligence and her natural taste for things of the understanding. It was the only pleasure (except that of writing letters) which lasted to the end of her life. She was not of the opinion of Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and other great religious oracles of the day in the matter of theatres; she forestalled the opinion of the future and that of the most indulgent moralists. “With regard to the priests who forbid the theatre,” she says, rather irreverently, “I shall say no more, except this, that if they saw a little further than their own noses they would understand that the money people spend on going to the play is not ill-spent; in the first place, the comedians are poor devils who earn their living that way; and next, comedies inspire joy, joy produces health, health gives strength, strength produces good work; therefore comedies should be encouraged, and not forbidden.” She liked to laugh, and the “Malade Imaginaire” diverted her to such a degree that one might think in reading her letters that she was trying to imitate all that is most physical and unfit for women in its style of pleasantry. And yet “the ‘Malade Imaginaire’ is not the one of Molière’s plays that I like best,” she says; “Tartuffe pleases me better.” And in another letter: “I cannot write longer, for I am called to go to the theatre; I am to see the ‘Misanthrope,’ the one of Molière’s plays that gives me the most pleasure.” She admired Corneille and quotes the “Death of Pompey.” I do not know whether she liked “Esther,” but she must surely have loved Shakespeare. “I have often heard his Highness, our father,” she writes to her half-sister, “say that there are no comedies in the world finer than those of the English.”

After the death of Monsieur and during the last years of Louis XIV. she adopted a way of life that was very precise and retired. “I live here quite deserted (May 3, 1709) for everybody, young and old, runs after favour. The Maintenon cannot endure me, and the Duchesse de Bourgogne likes only what that lady likes.” She became at last absolutely a hermit in the midst of the Court. “I consort with no one here, except my own people; I am as polite as I can be to everybody, but I contract no intimate relations with any one, and I live alone; I go to walk, I go to drive, but from two o’clock to half-past nine I never see a human face; I read, I write, or I amuse myself in making baskets like the one I sent my aunt.” Sometimes, however, to enliven this long interval from two o’clock to half-past nine, her ladies would play at hombre or brelan beside her writing-table.

The regency of her son brought the Court again around Madame; and her more frequent residence in Paris allowed her less retreat than she was able to make at Versailles. Sometimes, in the morning, half a dozen duchesses would take up her time and cut short her correspondence. She detested their conversations of mere politeness, in which they talked without having anything to say. “I would rather be alone than have to give myself the trouble of finding something to say to each of them; for the French think it very bad if you do not talk to them, and go away discontented; one must therefore take pains to say something to each; and so I am content and tranquil when they leave me to myself.” She made exception with less annoyance when it was a question of Germans of high rank, who all wished to be presented to her, and whom she greeted very well. At times there were as many as twenty-nine German princes, counts, and gentlemen in her apartment.

One evening she made a scene before all present to the Duchesse de Berry, her grand-daughter, who had appeared before her in a loose gown, or rather in fancy dress, intending to go to the Tuileries in such array. “No, madame,” she said, cutting short all explanation, “nothing excuses you; you might at least dress yourself properly the few times you do go to see the king; I, who am your grandmother, dress myself every day. Say honestly it is laziness that prevents you from doing so; which belongs neither to your age nor to your station. A princess should be dressed as a princess, and a soubrette as a soubrette.” While saying all this and not listening to the reply of the Duchesse de Berry, Madame went on writing her letter in German, her pen never ceasing to scratch the paper. The table on which she wrote was a secretary somewhat raised, so that in her pausing moments she could, without rising from her seat, look down upon the game of the players beside her. “That was her occupation if she ceased to write, but when any one came in and approached her she would leave everything to ask them, ‘What news?’ and as the giving of news made every one welcome, people invented it when there was none to tell. No sooner had she heard it than, without examination, she turned to the letter already begun and wrote down the tale she had just been told.” It is thus that, side by side with things that she sees well and says well, and which are in truth the expression of her own thought, her letters contain much else that is simply malignant gossip and trash.

In the days of Louis XIV. letters were unsealed at the post-office, read, and extracts made and sent to the king, and sometimes to Mme. de Maintenon. Madame knew that, but went her way in spite of it, using her privilege as princess to tell truths without reserve, and even to write insults on those who, unsealing the letters, would find her opinion of them. “In the days of M. de Louvois,” she writes, “they read all letters just as they do now, but at least they sent them on in decent time; but now that that toad of a Torcy directs the post-office, letters are delayed for an interminable length of time.... As Torcy does not know how to read German he has to have them translated, and I don’t thank him for his attention.” M. de Torcy must have enjoyed that passage.

Among the tastes, or fancies, which together with her letter-writing served to fill and amuse the long hours of Madame’s solitude, we must reckon two parrots, a canary, and eight little dogs. “After my dinner I walk my room for half an hour for the sake of digestion, and play with my little animals.” A nobler taste was that of coins, which Madame had to a high degree. She collected them from all parts of the world, and no one could pay their court more delicately than by bringing her a specimen. The collection that she thus formed was celebrated. She confided the care of it to the learned Baudelot, who had all the erudition and naïveté of an antiquary, and with whom she sometimes amused herself. “One study alone,” says one of her eulogists, “attracted her—that of coins. Her series of the emperors of the upper and lower empire, which she collected with judgment and arranged with care, placed before her eyes all that was most to be respected in past ages. While examining the features on the coins she recalled the salient points of their owners’ actions, filling her mind with noble ideas of Roman greatness.” I do not know whether in forming her cabinet of coins Madame had any such lofty and stern views, but at any rate, in this most remarkable of her tastes she showed herself the mother of the regent,—that is to say, of the most brilliant and best-informed of amateurs.

There is a serious side in the letters of Madame: that by which she judges the morals, the personages, and the society of the regency. She had some trouble in breaking herself in to that new style of life, and to a residence in the city and the Palais-Royal. “I like the Parisians,” she writes, “but I do not like to live in their town.” She had accustomed herself, during her long seasons at Saint-Cloud, to a measure of retreat, companionship, and liberty which suited her nature, and I shall even say, her semi-philosophy. When she returned there she felt herself in her element. “I find myself well at Saint-Cloud, where I am tranquil (1718); whereas in Paris I am never left an instant in peace. This one presents me a petition, that one asks me to interest myself on his behalf, another solicits an audience, and so forth. In this world great people have their worries like little ones, which is not surprising; but what makes it worse for the great is that they are always surrounded by a crowd, so that they can not hide their griefs, or indulge them in solitude—they are always on exhibition.”

That regret was in her a most sincere one. The power of her son brought her little influence, and she wanted none, save for the sake of a few private benefits. She asked him for nothing; she never meddled in public affairs or politics, and piqued herself on not understanding them. “I have no ambition,” she said (August, 1719); “I do not wish to govern; I should take no pleasure in it. It is not so with French women; the lowest servant-woman thinks herself quite fitted to rule the State. I think it so ridiculous that I am quite cured of all mania of that kind.”

She views like a virtuous woman the debauchery of the period, and that of her family, and she expresses the deep disgust she feels for it. The regent has never been better painted than he is by his mother; she shows him to us with his facile faculties, his interests of all kinds, his talents, his individual genius, his graces, his indulgence for all, even for his enemies; she denounces the one great capital fault that ruined him,—that ardent debauchery at a fixed hour, in which he buried himself and was lost to sight until the next morning. “All advice, all remonstrance on that subject,” she writes, “are useless; when spoken to he answers, ‘From six o’clock in the morning till night I am subjected to prolonged and fatiguing labour; if I did not amuse myself after that I could not bear it, I should die of melancholy.’ I pray God sincerely for his conversion,” she adds, “he has no other fault than that, but that is great.” She shows him to us as a libertine even in matters of science, that is, curious and amorous of all he saw, but disgusted with all he possessed. “Though he talks of learned things, I see plainly that instead of giving him pleasure they bore him. I have often scolded him for this; he answers it is not his fault; that he does take pleasure in learning all things, but as soon as he knows them he has no further pleasure in them.”

The most characteristic passages in her letters are of things that cannot be detached and cited singly. Never did the effrontery and gluttony of women of all ranks, the cupidity of everybody, the shameless traffic and cynical thirst for gold, find a firmer or more vigorous hand to catch them in the act and blast them. Madame, in treating of these excesses, has a species of virtuous immodesty like that of Juvenal; or rather, issuing from her Bible readings, she applies to present scandals the energy of the sacred text, and qualifies them in the language of the patriarchs. “How many times,” says one of her eulogists whom I like to quote, “how many times she condemned the bold negligence of attire which favoured corruption, and the taste for liberty and caprice—the fatal charm which our nation has criminally invented! Indecent fashions, which ancient decorum cannot away with, would often bring upon her face and in her eyes the emotion and fire of outraged modesty.” It was not a mere sentiment of etiquette which made her rebuke her grand-daughter, the Duchesse de Berry, on her dishabille, but another and a more estimable sentiment. Even where she is not outraged she gives details which make her smile with pity. “It is only too true that the women paint themselves blue veins to make believe their skins are so delicate the veins show through them.”

The Duc de Richelieu, a young dandy who turned all the heads of the day, and whom our writers, at their wits’ end, have lately endeavoured to restore to fashion in novels and plays, was to Madame an object of extreme aversion; she paints him with the hand of a master, as absolutely contemptible, with all his equivocal and frivolous charms, his varnish of politeness, and his vices. It is a portrait to read, and I should like to quote it here, but I am restrained by respect for the great men, and for the honourable men, who have made that name of Richelieu so French. Without going beyond general observations what can be more just and more sensible than the following reflection of Madame, written a few months before her death (April, 1722)? “Young men, at the epoch in which we live, have but two objects in view,—debauchery and lucre; the absorption of their minds on money-getting, no matter by what means, makes them dull and disagreeable; in order to be agreeable, people must have their minds free of care, and also have the wish to give themselves up to amusement in decent company; but these are things that are very far away from us now-a-days.” With a presentiment of her coming end, she asks of God only his mercy to herself and her children, especially her son. “May it please God to convert him! that is the sole favour that I ask of Him. I do not believe that there are in Paris, either among ecclesiastics or people of the world, one hundred persons who have a true Christian faith, and really believe in our Saviour; and that makes me tremble.”

The people of Paris recognized in Madame a princess of honour and integrity, incapable of giving bad advice or employing selfish influence; consequently, she was in great favour with the Parisians; more than she deserved, she said, meddling so little as she did in their affairs. Even amid the riots and the execrations roused by the catastrophes at the close of Law’s system, Madame, as she drove through the streets, received none but benedictions—which she would gladly have transferred to her son. She noticed as a mother on that occasion that if the cries were loud against Law, they were at least not shouted against the regent. But there were other days when the murmurs against her son reached her ears, and she complains of the ingratitude of Frenchmen towards him. She was not, however, without admitting to herself the element of weakness in his government; she tells it and repeats it constantly. “It is very true,” she says, “that it is better to be kind than harsh, but justice consists in punishing, as well as in rewarding; and it is certain that he who does not make Frenchmen fear him will soon fear them; for they despise those who do not intimidate them.” She knows the nation, and judges it as one who is not of it.

On one point Madame sacrificed to the spirit of the regency and was in curious contradiction to herself. She took a great liking to a natural son of the regent, whom he had by an opera-dancer named Florence; she said he reminded her of the “late Monsieur,” only with a better figure. In short, she loved the young man, whom she called her Abbé de Saint-Albin. He was afterwards Archbishop of Cambrai, and when he made his argument before the Sorbonne (February, 1718) she was present in great state, thus declaring, and also honouring, the illegitimate birth of this grandson. Madame deserted on that day all her orthodox principles about the duties of rank, and allowed herself to follow her fancies.

She died at the age of seventy at Saint-Cloud, December 8, 1722, ten days after her faithful friend, the Maréchale de Clérembault, and one year before her son, the regent. According to her own wish, she was taken to Saint-Denis without pomp. The obsequies were performed in the following February. Massillon, whom she knew and loved, pronounced her funeral oration, which was thought fine. Père Cathalan, a Jesuit, pronounced another at Laon in March, from which I have taken certain traits of her character.

Such as she is, with all her coarseness and her contradictions on a basis of virtue and honour, Madame is a useful, a precious, and an incomparable witness as to manners and morals. She gives a hand to Saint-Simon and to Dangeau—nearer, however, to the former than to the latter. She has heart; do not ask charm of her, but say: “That Court would have lacked the most original of figures and of voices if Madame had not been of it.” Arriving at Versailles at the moment when the La Vallière star declined and was eclipsed, and seeing only the last of the brilliant years, she enters little into that era of refinement which touches the imagination; but lacking that refinement, and solely through her frankness, she lays bare to us the second half of Louis XIV.’s reign under its human, most human, natural, and—to say the whole truth—its material aspect. She strips that great century of its idealism, she strips it too much; she goes almost to the point of degrading it—if we listen to her alone. As time goes on, and the delicacy and purity of manners and language retire more and more into Mme. de Maintenon’s corner and seek at last a refuge at Saint-Cyr, Madame holds herself aloof at Saint-Cloud, and again aloof in the Palais-Royal, and thence—whether at the close of Louis XIV.’s reign or under the regency—she makes, lance in hand, and her pen behind her ear, valiant and frequent sorties in that blunt style which is all her own, which wears a beard upon its chin, and of which we know not rightly whether it derives from Luther or from Rabelais, though we are very sure it is the opposite of that of Mme. de Caylus and her like.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.

Sainte-Beuve, in his essay on Madame, suggested to the French editor of her letters that he should make a more complete collection of them. M. Brunet professes to have done so in the edition from which this translation is selected.[2] But when examined the additions prove very insignificant, and the arrangement, though apparently more chronological, interferes with the interest of the reader. Passages which seem to belong together are cut up into sentences and scattered singly over weeks and months; so that the point of Madame’s racy representations is often weakened. In this translation parts of the letters of each year on a given topic are put together, so as to offer a better picture of Madame’s thought; as for her nature, she gives that herself, and no one can better the portrait.

Nothing need be added to Sainte-Beuve’s admirable essay beyond a brief account of Madame’s parentage, family relations, and the history, such as it is, of her correspondence.

She was born at Heidelberg in 1652. Soon after her birth, her father, Charles-Louis, Elector Palatine, parted from his wife, Charlotte of Hesse-Cassel, and the little daughter, Élisabeth-Charlotte, was given to the care of her father’s sister, Sophia, Electress of Hanover (mother of George I. of England); with whom she remained until her marriage, against her wishes, in 1671, to Monsieur, brother of Louis XIV., after the death of his first wife, Henrietta, daughter of Charles I. of England. The marriage was political,—Louis XIV. seeking to acquire rights in the Palatinate, and subsequently in Bavaria.

The father of Élisabeth-Charlotte, after parting from his wife, married morganatically Louise de Degenfeld, by whom he had five sons and three daughters,—these children being of course excluded from the succession. Madame, in her ill-assorted and personally mortifying marriage, of which she bravely strove to make the best, found all her comfort in writing letters, a very small portion of which have been preserved. All those addressed during her married life to her beloved aunt, the Electress of Hanover, have disappeared, probably destroyed by the judicious aunt herself, for Madame alludes to them as containing secrets she did not write to others. Among the many personages to whom she wrote habitually were: Duke Antoine Ulrich of Brunswick; her two unmarried half-sisters, Louise and Amélie, Countesses Palatine; her step-daughters, to whom she was warmly attached, Marie-Louise, wife of Charles II., King of Spain, and Anne-Marie, wife of Victor-Amadeus, Duke of Savoie and King of Sardinia and Sicily (the mother of Marie-Adélaïde, Duchesse de Bourgogne); and her own daughter, the Duchesse de Lorraine. Besides these, she had a number of correspondents on the other side of the Rhine, such as her cousins the Queen of Prussia and the Duchess of Modena; her old governess in Hanover; Leibnitz in Leipzig; also the Princess of Wales, Wilhelmina-Caroline of Brandebourg-Anspach, in London.

Of these letters (scarcely any remaining extant except those to her half-sisters) fragments first appeared at Stuttgard in 1789, subsequently in Paris, in 1807, 1823, 1832. In 1843 the first edition in a volume was published at Stuttgard by M. Wolfgang Menzel, a translation of which by M. Brunet appeared in Paris in 1853. That translation was made from the German volume, the original letters having disappeared in a conflagration. A subsequent edition, with a few insignificant additions as mentioned above, appeared a few years later, from the last issue of which the present translation has been selected.

M. Brunet remarks in his preface, that “Madame had the habit of reproducing almost in the same terms the details which she gave of the same events to diverse persons. She wrote with extreme rapidity, passing, without any transition, from one subject to another, piling up useless words and insignificant particulars which it would be quite absurd to try to reproduce. Expressions of regret at the deaths or the illnesses of Madame’s numerous relatives, interminable protestations of friendship, wearisome repetitions, swelled beyond all measure the letters that came into the hands of M. Menzel, who cut off two-thirds of them, preserving such parts only as had a more or less general interest and an historical value.”

The following letters are almost exclusively addressed to her half-sisters, and chiefly to the Comtesse Louise, the Comtesse Amélie having died in 1709. The names of her correspondents do not precede the letters in the French edition, except in a few instances.

Madame needs no interpreter, for even her vituperative faculty conveys its own correction; her hatred to Mme. de Maintenon becomes amusing, and we are quite able to see the justice and the injustice of it. Her favourite term for her enemy is, however, so outrageous (la vieille guenipe, the old slut, or any such equivalent—once she descends to saying la vieille truie) that it is more agreeable to the reader to keep the word in French than to constantly repeat it in English.

Madame died on the 8th of December, 1722, at the age of seventy, just one year before the death of her son, the regent. She was buried in Saint-Denis, and Massillon pronounced her funeral oration.

The letters of Adélaïde de Savoie, Duchesse de Bourgogne and dauphine, are of little value, as the reader will see, if judged historically, or as a document on the manners and customs of a period. They are placed here as a contemporary record of a tender and pathetic young life on its passage, through frivolity and ill-health, to a premature death just as age had corrected her defects, and the prospect of being, with her husband, the blessing and salvation of France was dawning before her.

Sainte-Beuve possessed a natural spirit of justice which led him (though it did not invariably rule him) to satisfy his literary conscience by returning to the portraits of his personages to correct, modify, and balance his first impressions. It is in this spirit that his picture of Mme. de Maintenon and Saint-Cyr, followed by a number of her own letters and papers on that section of her life, are given here to succeed the prejudiced statements of her two greatest enemies, Saint-Simon and Madame. The picture of Saint-Cyr stands apart in Mme. de Maintenon’s career in a frame of its own; it shows her at her very best and as she herself would fain appear to posterity. It is the other extreme of the portraiture, and the reader must form his own judgment as to how the full truth of the nature and conduct of this remarkable woman can be evolved.

CORRESPONDENCE OF MADAME.

I.

Letters of 1695-1714.

To her sister Louise, Comtesse Palatine.

Versailles, 1695.

King James of England is not willing that we should wear mourning for his daughter [Mary]; he has vehemently insisted that nothing of the kind should be done. He is not at all moved by this death, which surprises me, for I should think a man could not forget his children, no matter what wrongs he has against them; blood must surely keep its strength. From the portrait they made me of Prince [King] William, I should not have thought he was so much attached to his wife; and I like him for it.

I am very glad to hear that Charles-Maurice [her half-brother] loves me, though he has never seen me; that is the effect of blood. It is not surprising that I love him, for I saw him come into the world; and besides, I have always retained such respect for his Highness our father that I love all those who are his children. I wish that Charles-Maurice may soon be made a colonel. We die when our time comes; Maurice will not live beyond the period that fate assigns him, whether he stays at Court or goes to war. He had better follow his inclination, for all that is done from liking is better done than when one yields to constraint.

We have here a Comte de Nassau, a very brave man and much respected. He holds a patent from the emperor authorizing him to take the title of prince; but he makes no use of it, for which I think very well of him. Dancing has gone out of fashion everywhere. Here, in France, as soon as the company assemble they do nothing but play lansquenet; that is the game in vogue; even the young people do not care to dance. As for me, I do neither. I am much too old to dance, which I have not done since the death of our father. I never play cards for two reasons: first, I have no money; and next, I don’t like gambling. They play here for frightful sums, and the players are like madmen; one howls, another strikes the table so hard that the room resounds, a third blasphemes in such a way that one’s hair stands on end, and they all seem beside themselves and are terrifying to see.

I beg you to greet for me all our old friends in the Palatinate; I curse this war to-day more than ever. My poor son, who has been seriously ill and is still taking quinine, was engaged in that affair when Maréchal de Villeroy fell upon the rear-guard of the Prince de Vaudemont and put four battalions to flight. Though my son has had the luck to escape a wound, I tremble lest fatigue should bring back his fever. A good peace is much to be desired.

I regard it as great praise that people should say I have a German heart and that I love my country; I shall endeavour, by the grace of God, to deserve that praise to my last day. I have indeed a German heart, for I cannot console myself for what is happening in that unfortunate Palatinate; I cannot think about it; it makes me sad all day. Next Saturday I return, with regret, to Paris, which I think very disagreeable.

There is nothing in the world so miserable as the fate of a Queen of Spain; I know this by the late queen, who used to write me day by day the existence that she led. It is even worse in Portugal, and it shows the truth of the proverb that all is not gold that glitters.

I was too old when I came to France to change my character, the foundations were laid. There is nothing surprising in that; but I should be inexcusable if I were false and did not love the persons for whom I ought to feel an attachment. You have reason to think that I write as I think; I am too frank to write otherwise. The good Duchesse de Guise, cousin of the king and of Monsieur, died five days ago. I have felt much afflicted; she was a worthy, pious woman; we dined together every day. There was only an antechamber between my room and her cabinet. She kept her mind till the last moment, and died tranquilly, without regrets.

Versailles, 1697.

If I had not heard from my aunt that you were going to Holland, I should have been quite surprised at getting your letter from the Hague. My health is now pretty good; as usual, I have driven away the fever by hunting. I have had the satisfaction to do some service to the prisoners who have been brought here. I cannot do much, but I shall spare no pains to be useful to compatriots who may need me.

I remember the Hague perfectly; I always thought it a very agreeable city, but the air is not as good as it is in the Palatinate and everything is so very dear in Holland. King William is not at Loo, but at the head of his army; God grant there may not be a battle, for I can’t help trembling at the thought of it because of my son. The fate of those good people of the Palatinate makes me wretched; but I can do nothing to prevent it. Let us all unite in prayers for peace, for it is indeed very needful.

It is deplorable that the priests have brought it about that Christians are divided one against another. If I had my way, the three Christian religions should form but one; we should not ask what people believed, but whether they lived in accordance with the Gospel, and the priests should preach against those who lead bad lives. Christians ought to be allowed to marry and go to church where they like; and then there would be more harmony than there is now.

I think so well of King William that I would rather have him for a son-in-law than the Emperor of Germany. I can say with truth of my daughter that she has no idea of coquetry or gallantry; in that respect she gives me no anxiety, and I think I shall never have anything to fear; she is not handsome, but she has a pretty figure, a good face, and good feelings. I am convinced that she will stay an old maid, for, according to all appearance, King William will marry the Princess of Denmark. I fancy that the emperor will take the second Princess of Savoie, and the Duc de Lorraine the daughter of the emperor, so that no one will be left for my daughter.

I don’t know if you remember how gay I was in my youth; all that has gone; I have been more than six weeks without laughing even once. The theatre is what amuses me the most. If you knew all that goes on here you would certainly not be surprised that I am no longer gay. Another in my place would have been dead of grief this long while; as for me, I only grow fat upon it.

Saint-Cloud

Saint-Cloud.

I received two weeks ago your letter of May 21, but I could not answer it, for I was not in a state to write, and Mlle. de Rathsamhausen [her lady-of-honour] spells so badly that I do not care to dictate to her.[3] I must tell you what has happened to me. Once a month I go with Monseigneur the dauphin to hunt a wolf. It had rained; the ground was slippery; we had searched for a wolf two hours without finding one, and then started for another point, where we hoped to do better. As we were following a wood-path a wolf sprang up just in front of my horse, which was frightened and reared on its hind legs and slipped and fell over on its right side, and my elbow coming in contact with a big stone was dislocated. They looked for the king’s surgeon who was with the hunt, but could not find him, for his horse had lost a shoe and he had gone to a village to have it put on. A peasant said there was a very skilful barber two leagues off who set legs and arms every day of his life; when I heard he had such experience I got into a calèche and was driven to him—not without very great pain. As soon as he had set my arm I suffered nothing and drove back here at once. My surgeon and Monsieur’s surgeon examined the hurt. I think they were rather jealous that a poor countryman had done the thing so well. They bandaged my arm again and made me suffer beyond measure; my hand swelled up in a horrible manner; I could not move my wrist or lift my hand to my mouth.

It is very true that celibacy is the best condition; the best of men is not worth the devil. Love in marriage is no longer the fashion, and is thought ridiculous. The Catholics here say in their catechism that marriage is a sacrament, but, in point of fact, they live with their wives as if it were no sacrament at all, and, what is worse, nothing is more approved than to see men have gallantries and desert their wives—But not to enlarge upon this subject, I will talk to you about my wolf.

You have heard by this time that peace has been signed with the emperor and the empire; that is a great step towards a general peace. I do not think that war will break out in Poland, for it is not at all certain that our Prince de Conti will go there; he may renounce it, which I think would be much better for him than the crown of Poland; it is a savage, dirty country, and the nobles are too ambitious.

These are dangerous times for young men, and they would do better to go and seek honour in war than stay here doing nothing and leading the most dissolute lives, for which, be it said between you and me, my son has but too great a liking. He says he has taste only for women and not for other debauchery, which is as common here as it is in Italy, and therefore he thinks we ought to praise him and be grateful to him; but his behaviour does not please me at all.

Those who do not know the exact situation of things here imagine that the king and Court are just what they used to be; but everything is changed in a sorry way. If any one who had left the Court at the time of the queen’s death returned here now he would think he had stepped into another world. There is much to be said about this, but I cannot confide it to paper, because all letters are opened and read. My aunt used to say that everybody here below is a demon charged to torment somebody else; and that is very true. We know that all things are the result of the will of God, and happen as He has fixed from all eternity, but the Almighty not having consulted us on what He meant to do, we are in ignorance of the causes of what we see going on about us.

Fontainebleau, 1698.

I have not written to you for several days because I have been to Montargis, whence we have come back here, where we found the courier who brought us the dispensation for my daughter’s marriage. It will take place Monday next and two days later she will start. [Mlle. de Chartres married Léopold, Duc de Lorraine, and was the mother of Francis I., Emperor of Germany, the husband of Maria Theresa.] You can easily imagine that my heart is full, and that I am nearer to weeping than laughing, for my daughter and I have never been separated, and now we are to part for a long time. My eyes are full of tears, but I must hide them; otherwise people would laugh at me, for in this country they do not understand how it is that persons should love their relations. One repents very soon of speaking out one’s thoughts, and that is why I live such a solitary life. You are very happy in being able to laugh still; it is a long time since I have done so, though formerly I used to laugh more than any one. Persons have only to marry in France and the desire to laugh will soon leave them.

The King of England is not, I think, in much of a hurry to be married. That monarch is certainly, on account of his merit, one of the greatest kings that ever wore a crown; but between ourselves, if I were maid or widow and he did me the honour to want to marry me, I would rather pass my life in celibacy than become the greatest queen in the world on condition of taking a husband, for marriage has become to me an object of horror.

What is worse in this country than in England is that all the persons who conduct themselves ill, men and women, devote themselves to politics and seek to intrigue at Court, which leads to much perfidy and deception. In whatever country we live, if we are married we must drive jealousy out of our hearts, for it does no good; we must wash our hands in innocency and keep our conscience pure, although we may have no pleasant intercourse and nothing but long and weary hours of ennui. I do not fret myself now about the way the world goes on; I despise it, and I have little taste for being in society. One hears of nothing just now but tragical events; they have lately condemned five women who killed their husbands; others killed themselves.

Nothing is so rare in France as Christian faith; there is no longer any vice of which persons are ashamed. If the king wanted to punish all those who are guilty of the worst vices he would find no more princes or nobles or servants about him; there would not be a family in France that was not in mourning.

Fontainebleau, 1699.

I receive sometimes very friendly letters from the Queen of Spain [wife of Charles II.]. I am sorry that poor queen is so unhappy. It would be a great blessing for Europe if she could have a child, boy or girl would do, provided it lived; for one does not need to be a prophet to divine that if the King of Spain dies without children a terrible war will arise; all the Powers will claim the succession, and none of them will yield to any of the others; nothing but a war can decide.

I have heard with grief of the conduct of Charles-Maurice in Berlin; if he behaves in that way we shall not continue good friends. I am very angry to know that he is dead-drunk nearly half the day. If I thought that scolding him very severely would correct him I would write to him. It is distressing to think that the only remaining son of our father should be a drunkard.

Marly, 1700.

It is not a mere tale that the King of Morocco has asked in marriage the Princesse de Conti [daughter of Louis XIV. and Louise de la Vallière], but the king repulsed the proposal sharply. That princess was extremely beautiful before she had the small-pox, but her illness has greatly changed her. She still has a perfect figure and charming carriage, and dances admirably; I never saw any engraved portrait that was like her.

I can understand why people go to Rome, like my cousin the Landgrave of Cassel, to see the antiquities, but I cannot imagine that they should go to be present at all those priests’ ceremonies, for nothing is more tiresome. Perhaps some people go for the thirty thousand dames galantes who are said to be there; but those who like such merchandise have only to come to France, where they will find them in abundance. Those who want to repent of their sins need not go to Rome; to repent sincerely in their own homes is quite as profitable. Here no one cares about Rome or the pope; they are quite convinced they can get to heaven without him.

I seldom see Monsieur here [Marly]; we do not dine together; he plays cards all day, and at night we are each in our own room. Monsieur has the weakness to think that when he is overlooked at cards he has ill-luck; so I never assist at his games. He has frightened us very much by having a quartan fever; this is the day it is due to return, but, thanks to God, he feels nothing of it yet, and he is in the salon, playing cards.

All letters entering or leaving France are opened; I know that very well, but it does not trouble me; I continue to write what comes into my head.

To Madame de Maintenon.

Saint-Cloud, June 15, 1701.[4]

If I had not had fever and great agitation, Madame, from the sad employment of yesterday in opening the caskets of Monsieur’s papers, scented with the most violent perfumes, you would have heard from me earlier; but I can no longer delay expressing to you how touched I am by the favours that the king did yesterday to my son, and the manner in which he has treated both him and myself; and as all this is the result of your good counsels, Madame, be pleased to allow me to express my sense of it and to assure you that I shall keep, very inviolably, the promise of friendship which I made to you; I beg you to continue to me your counsels and advice, and not to doubt a gratitude which can end only with my life.

To Louise, Comtesse Palatine.

Versailles, July 15, 1701.

My health is still much weakened; this is the first time for eight days that the fever has left me. Since the blow that struck me I have had eighteen paroxysms of fever, and I thought it was the will of God to end my sad life; but it was not so. I am left with great lassitude and weakness of the legs, which I attribute to the shock of Monsieur’s death; they continued to tremble for twenty-four hours as if from a violent attack of fever. Nothing could have been more dreadful than what I witnessed. At nine o’clock in the evening Monsieur left my room, gay and laughing; at half-past ten they called me, and I found him almost unconscious; but he recognized me and said a few words with much difficulty. I stayed the whole night beside him, and the next morning at six o’clock, when there was no longer any hope, they carried me away unconscious.

I am grateful to you for the share you take in my misfortune, which is dreadful, and I thank you with all my heart. I beg you to let the Queen-dowager of Denmark know how much I am touched that her Majesty has remembered me in my trouble.

I have need to find, in my sad situation, something to divert my thoughts; everything is forbidden to me at present except walking; my greatest comfort is the kindness of the king, of which he continues to give me many proofs. He comes to see me and takes me to walk with him. Saturday was the day when Monsieur was interred, and though I was not present, I wept much, as you can well imagine.

I have every reason to rejoice in the king’s favour, and so has my son, whom the king has made a very great seigneur. I am well pleased for him; we live happily together; he is a good lad with very good feelings.

October, 1701.

My health is now perfect, and to keep it so I drive out as much as I can. All the others hunt daily with the king, and go twice a week to the theatre. I am deprived of those things, as you know, and between ourselves, it is not a little privation to be obliged to forego those two amusements. I walk out often on foot and go a good three miles in the forest; that disperses the melancholy that would otherwise crush me; especially when I hear talk about public affairs of which I had previously never heard a word in all my life. I should be very fortunate if I could understand them as you do, but I never could, and at fifty one is too old to begin to learn; I should only make myself as annoying and irritating as a bed-bug. Apropos of bed-bugs, they nearly ate up the little Queen of Spain on her passage up the Mediterranean in the Spanish galleys. Her people were obliged to sit up with her all night. She arrived a few days ago at Toulon, and went from there by land to Barcelona because, so she wrote me, she could not endure the sea any longer. I would not be in her place; to be a queen is painful in any country, but to be Queen of Spain is worst of all.

I must acknowledge that the death of King James has made me very sad; his widow is in a situation to melt a heart of rock. The good king died with a firmness I cannot describe, and with as much tranquillity as if he were going to sleep. The evening before his death he said: “I forgive my daughter with all my heart for the harm she did me; and I pray God to pardon her, and also the Prince of Orange and all my other enemies.” The Queen of England cannot be consoled for the death of her husband, though she bears her sorrow with Christian resignation. I have nothing new to tell you; I walk and read and write; sometimes the king drives me to the hunt in his calèche. There are hunts every day; Sundays and Wednesdays are my son’s days; the king hunts Mondays and Thursdays; Wednesdays and Saturdays Monseigneur hunts the wolf; M. le Comte de Toulouse, Mondays and Wednesdays; the Duc du Maine, Tuesdays; and M. le Duc, Fridays. They say if all the hunting kennels were united there would be from 900 to 1000 dogs. Twice a week there is a comedy. But you know, of course, that I go nowhere; which vexes me, for I must own that the theatre is the greatest amusement I have in the world, and the only pleasure that remains to me.

You are wrong in supposing that I have ceased to read the Bible; I read three chapters every morning. You ought not to imagine that French Catholics are as silly as German Catholics; it is quite another thing,—one might almost say it is another religion. Any one reads Holy Scripture who chooses. Nobody here thinks the pope infallible, and when he excommunicated Lavardin in Rome everybody laughed and never dreamed of a pilgrimage. There is as much difference in France from the Catholic of Germany as there is from those of Italy and Spain.

Those who wish to serve God in truth and according to His word should read Holy Scripture every day; otherwise we sit in darkness. I am persuaded that good religion is founded on the word of God, and consists in having Jesus Christ in the heart; all the rest is only the prating of priests. Of whatever religion we be, it is only by works that true faith is shown, and only by them can it be judged who does right. To love God and our neighbour is the law and the prophets, as our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us.

I heard yesterday, through a letter from my aunt, the Electress of Brunswick, of the death of our poor Charles-Maurice. I am sincerely afflicted by it, and I pity you from the bottom of my heart. If Charles-Maurice had not loved wine so much he would have been a perfect philosopher. He has paid dear for his fault, for I am sure that drunkenness shortened his life; he could not keep from drinking, and he burnt up his body.

If the Court of France was what it used to be one might learn here how to behave in society; but—excepting the king and Monsieur—no one any longer knows what politeness is. The young men think only of horrible debauchery. I do not advise any one to send their children here; for instead of learning good things, they will only take lessons in misconduct. You are right in blaming Germans who send their sons to France; how I wish that you and I were men and could go to the wars!—but that’s a completely useless wish to have. The higher one’s position in life the more polite we ought to be in order to set a good example to others. It is impossible to be more polite than the king; but his children and grandchildren are not so at all. If I could with propriety return to Germany you would see me there quickly. I love that country; I think it more agreeable than all others, because there is less of luxury that I do not care for, and more of the frankness and integrity which I seek. But, be it said between ourselves, I was placed here against my will, and here I must stay till I die. There is no likelihood that we shall see each other again in this life; and what will become of us after that God only knows.

Versailles, 1704.

There are very few women here who are not coquettes by nature; it is excessively rare to meet any. Before God that is perhaps very reprehensible, but before men it is thought a fair game. The coquettes flatter themselves that, our Lord having shown in Holy Scripture so much charity for persons of their stripe, he will certainly have compassion for them; the cases of Mary Magdalen, of the Samaritan woman, and of the woman taken in adultery make them easy in mind. You must not think that they ever tire of coquetry; they cannot do without it, so to speak, and they never get tired of it. Drunkenness is but too much the fashion among the young women; but just now they are all in a state of complete satisfaction. Nothing is thought of but how to amuse the Duchesse de Bourgogne with collations, presents, fireworks, and other rejoicings:

I have not been able to perform the good work of keeping fast this Lent. I cannot endure fish, and I am quite convinced that we can do better works than spoiling our stomachs by eating too much of it.

Are you simple enough to believe that Catholics have none of the true foundations of Christianity? Believe me, the aim of Christianity is the same in all Christians; the differences that we see are only priests’ jargon, which does not concern honest men. What does concern us is to live well as Christians, to be merciful, and to apply ourselves to charity and virtue. Preachers ought to recommend all that to Christians, and not squabble as they do over quantities of points, as if they understood them; but this, of course, would diminish the authority of those gentlemen, and so they busy themselves with disputes, and not with what is more necessary and most essential.

I have in no way approved of the ill-treatment of the Reformers; but as to that, one must blame politics, which is a subject to be treated of tête-à-tête and not touched upon by way of the post. I shall therefore follow your good example and write of something else.

The jubilee bull has not converted all the abbés, for there are still a goodly number of them in Paris who court the women. I never in my life could understand how any one could fall in love with an ecclesiastic. Neither you nor your sister are coquettes; I can truly say I recognize my blood. What prevents one here from contracting sincere friendships is that one can never be sure of reciprocity; there is so much egotism and duplicity. And so one must either live in a very sad and wearisome solitude, or resign one’s self to many griefs.

Versailles, 1705.

I was never scolded for sleeping in church, and so I have acquired a habit of it which I cannot get rid of. In the mornings I do not go to sleep; but in the evenings, after dinner, it is impossible for me to keep awake. I never sleep at the theatre, but I do, very often, at the opera. I believe the devil cares very little whether I sleep or not in church; sleep is not a sin, but the result of human weakness. I see you are too devout to go to the theatre on Sunday; but I think that visiting is more dangerous than the theatre; for it is difficult in a visit not to say harm of your neighbour, which is a much worse sin than seeing a comedy. I should never approve of going to the theatre instead of going to church; but after having fulfilled one’s duties to God, I think the theatre is less dangerous for a scrupulous conscience than conversation.

Many Frenchwomen, especially those who have been coquettish and debauched, as soon as they grow old and can no longer have lovers, make themselves devout—or, at least, they say they are. Usually such women are very dangerous; they are envious and cannot endure others. But I must stop, my dear Louise; I am sweating in a terrible way. The heat is extraordinary; it is two months since a drop of rain has fallen, and the leaves are frying on the trees.

I know very well what it is to be exposed in hunting to a burning sun; many a time I have stayed with the hounds from early morning till five in the evening, and in summer till nine at night. I come in red as a lobster, with my face all burned; that is why my skin is so rough and brown. No one pays any attention here to the dust; I have seen in travelling such clouds of it that we could not see each other in the coach, and yet the king never ordered the horsemen to keep back. The good night air does no one any harm; at Marly I often walk out by moonlight.

Versailles, 1706.

Amélie [another sister, Comtesse Palatine] writes me that she has answered the king of Prussia, and makes many jokes about it. I would reply to her in the same tone, but since the day before yesterday I have lost all desire to laugh and joke. We received news that, the orders of my son [with the army of Italy] not having been followed, the lines before Turin have been forced; my son has two severe wounds: one in the thigh, but a flesh wound only; the other through the right arm, without the bone being broken. The surgeons assure us there is no danger to life; God grant it! For two days I have done nothing but weep; they tell me he is not in danger, but his sufferings grieve me; my eyes are so swollen and red I cannot see out of them.

The siege of Turin and the catastrophe that has ended it, almost costing me the life of my son, makes me sigh more than ever for peace. I have been so harassed for the last three days that I think I should have lost my mind if the anxiety had lasted longer. I have constantly said that they ought to make those two kings of Spain [she means the claimants of the throne, Philippe V. and the Archduke Charles] wrestle together, and whichever had the strongest wrist should win; such a singular combat to settle the fate of a kingdom would be more Christian than to shed the blood of so many men.

We have here a species of pietists who are what they call quietists; but they are much better than the pietists of Germany; they are not so debauched. The King of Siam, when our king wanted to convert him to Christianity, replied that he thought people could be saved in all religions, and that God, who had willed that the leaves of the trees should be of different colored greens, wished to be worshipped in diverse manners; therefore the King of France ought to continue to serve God in the way to which he was accustomed; while, for himself, he should adore God in his way, and if God wished him to change He would inspire him with the will to do so. I think that king was not far wrong. I believe that a long time will elapse before the last judgment; we have not yet seen Antichrist.

I thank you for the medals you have sent me; but I should like to receive those that are made against France. I already have the most insulting,—those that were struck in the reign of King William. The king and the ministers have them, therefore you need not hesitate to send them to me on the first occasion.[5]

I have received your letters from Heidelberg and Frankfort, and I answered them; but my letters to you, dear Louise, are all in the packet to my aunt which has been detained so long that we are nearly crazy about it. But that is what the all-powerful dame and the ministers succeed in—far better than they do in governing the kingdom.

Versailles, 1709.

Never in my life did I know so gloomy a period. The people are dying of cold like flies. The mills are stopped, and that has forced many to die of hunger. Yesterday they told me a sorrowful story about a woman who stole a loaf of bread from a baker’s shop in Paris. The baker wanted to arrest her; she said, weeping, “If you knew my misery you would not take the loaf away from me; I have three little children all naked; they ask me for bread; I cannot bear it, and that is why I have stolen the loaf.” The commissary before whom they took the woman told her to take him where she lived; he went there, and found the three little children sitting in a corner under a heap of rags, trembling with cold as if they had the ague. “Where is your father?” he asked the eldest. The child answered, “Behind the door.” The commissary looked to see why the father was hiding behind the door, and recoiled with horror—the man had hung himself in despair. Such things are happening daily.

I am very much deserted here, for every one, young and old, runs after favour. The Maintenon cannot endure me, and the Duchesse de Bourgogne likes only what that lady likes. I have done my best to conciliate that all-powerful person, but I cannot succeed in doing so. So I am excluded from everything, and I never see the king except at supper. I can only act according to the will of others. I was less bound when Monsieur was living. I dare not sleep away from Versailles without the king’s permission. It is not wrong, therefore, that I should wish to be with you in our dear Palatinate; but God does not will that here below we should be fully satisfied. You and Amélie are free, but your health is bad; I am lonely, but my health, thank God, is perfect.

You are mistaken if you think that no lamentations are heard here; night and day we hear of nothing else; the famine is so great that children have eaten each other. The king is so determined to continue the war that yesterday he gave up his gold service and now uses porcelain; he has sent every gold thing he has to the mint to be turned into coin.

All that one sees and hears is dreadful; we are living in a very fatal epoch. If one leaves the house one is followed by a crowd of poor creatures who cry famine; all payments are made in notes; there is no coin anywhere; all one’s contentment is destroyed till better days appear.

The old lady who is here in such great favour hates me; I have done my best to obtain her good will, but I cannot succeed; she has vowed to me and to my son an implacable hatred. One must do what is reasonable and walk a straight path: God will see to it all.

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.

Versailles, May, 1711.

I am unworthy to hear good sermons, for I cannot help sleeping; the tones of the preachers’ voices send me off at once. We are here in the greatest grief. I have told you already how poor Monsieur le dauphin died unexpectedly. His illness was dreadful. The Duchesse de Villeroy only spoke to her husband, who had been in the dauphin’s room at Meudon, and she was infected and died of it.

The king is a good Christian, but very ignorant in matters of religion. He has never in his life read the Bible; he believes all the priests and the canting bigots tell him; it is therefore no wonder he goes astray. They tell him he must act in such and such a way; he knows no better, and thinks he will be damned if he listens to other advice than that of his regular counsellors.

The dauphin was not without intelligence; he was quick to seize on all absurdities, his own as well as those of others. He could relate things very amusingly when he chose, but his laziness was such that it made him neglect everything. He would much have preferred an indolent life to the possession of all empires and kingdoms. In his life he never opposed the king’s wishes, and he was as submissive as anybody to the Maintenon. Those who assert that he would have retired from Court had the king announced his marriage to the guenipe did not know him; he had himself a villanous guenipe for mistress, whom it was thought he had married secretly; her name was Mlle. Choin; she is still in Paris. What prevented the old Maintenon from being declared queen were the good reasons given against it to the king by the Archbishop of Cambrai, M. de Fénelon; and that is why she persecuted that good and respectable prelate till his death.

Versailles, June, 1712.

I thank you for the share you take in my grief on account of the death of the great personages whom we have lost,[8] and also on account of the frightful calumnies that are being spread about against my son, who is innocent. The fabricators of those lies are confounded, and now ask pardon: but was it not horrible to invent such tales?

I cannot endure either tea, coffee, or chocolate; what would give me pleasure is good beer-soup; but it cannot be procured here; beer in France is worthless.

I hoped that, the king having taken medicine yesterday, H. M. would not hunt to-day, and that I should thus have time to write you a reasonable letter; but the demon of contretemps, as they say here, has come and put himself against it. We hunted this morning, and I did not get back to dinner till mid-day; I have answered my aunt and written her fourteen sheets, so now I have but little time left before supper.

Happily for me I no longer like cards, for I am not rich enough to risk my whole fortune as other people do, and I have no taste for little stakes. Though I do not play, time does not seem long to me when I am alone in my cabinet. I have quite a fine collection of gold coins and medals; my aunt has given me others in silver and bronze; I have two or three hundred engraved antique stones; also many brass pieces which I like equally; I read with pleasure, and therefore I am never bored, be the weather good or bad; I have always something to do, and I write a great deal. When, in one day, I have written twenty sheets to H. H. the Princess of Wales, ten or twelve to my daughter, twenty in French to the Queen of Sicily [Anne-Marie, Monsieur’s daughter by Henrietta of England] I am so tired that I cannot put one foot before the other.

Marly, May, 1714.

We have lost the poor Duc de Berry, who was only twenty-seven years old, and was stout and so healthy he ought to have lived a hundred years. He shortened his life by his own imprudences—but I don’t want to talk of such sad matters; it makes me sick at heart and does no good.

It is a good thing for me that he had ceased for several years to love me, otherwise I could not be comforted for his loss. I own that at first, and even for some days afterwards, I was greatly moved; but having reflected that if I had died he would only have laughed, I consoled myself promptly.

July, 1714.

I cannot express the grief into which I am plunged by the death of my aunt [Sophia, Electress of Hanover, mother of George I. of England, who had brought Madame up, being the sister of her father]; and I have, besides, the misery of being forced to suppress my sorrow, because the king cannot endure to see sad faces round him; I am obliged therefore to hunt as usual.

II.

Letters of 1714-1716.

Fontainebleau, 1714.

We are here since yesterday; having slept at the house of the Duc d’Antin, called Petit-Bourg, a charming residence; the gardens, especially, are magnificent. I did not come with the king, because two days before leaving Versailles I caught a bad cold in my head accompanied by a terrible cough, and I feared to disgust the king and make the young people laugh by spitting and blowing my nose; so I came in my own carriage with my ladies and dogs. Yesterday they hunted, but I could not go; it used to be great pain to me to lose a hunt, but now I do not care.

A Hunt at Fontainebleau

You think my life is spent in pleasure-parties and amusements; to undeceive you I will tell you just how my existence is regulated. Usually I get up at nine o’clock; I go where you can guess; next, I say my prayers and read three chapters in the Bible, one in the Old Testament, one in the New, and a psalm; then I dress myself and receive the visits of many of the Court people; at eleven I return to my cabinet, where I read and write. At twelve I go to church; after which I dine alone, which amuses me very little, for I think there is nothing so tiresome as to be alone at table, surrounded by servants who look at everything you put in your mouth; and besides, though I have been here forty-three years, I have not yet accustomed myself to the detestable cooking of this country. After my dinner, which is usually over by a quarter to two, I return to my cabinet and rest half an hour, and then I read and write till it is time for the king’s supper; sometimes my ladies play ombre or brelan beside my table. Madame d’Orléans or the Duchesse de Berry, or sometimes my son, comes to see me between half-past nine and ten. At a quarter to eleven we take our places at table and wait for the king, who sometimes does not come till half-past eleven; we sup without saying a word; then we pass into the king’s room, where we stay about the length of a Pater; the king makes a bow and retires into his cabinet; we follow him,—though I have only done so since the death of the last dauphine; the king talks with us; at half-past twelve he says good-night, and all retire to their own apartments; I go to bed; Mme. la Duchesse plays cards, the game lasting all night till the next day. When there is comedy I go to it at seven o’clock, and thence to the king’s supper; when there is hunting it is always at one o’clock; then I get up at eight and go to church at eleven.

I have seen Lord Peterborough twice; he said the oddest things; he has got a mind like the devil, but a very strange head, and he talks in a singular way. He said, in speaking of the two kings of Spain, “We are great fools to let ourselves be killed for two such boobies.”

I am really vexed that that old and odious Duchesse de Zell should still be living, whereas our dear electress is dead already.

You probably have heard of the taking of Barcelona. I approve of the people being faithful to a master so long as he shows himself worthy of their affection; but when he abandons them it would be better not to shed so much blood, and to submit peaceably. But those cursèd monks are afraid they cannot live as they choose and be respected as much as they have been under a king of France, and so they preached up and down the streets that Barcelona must not be surrendered. If my advice were followed they would put those rascals in the galleys, instead of the poor Reformers who are languishing there.

October, 1714.

This is, unhappily, the last letter that I shall write you from my dear Fontainebleau; we leave Wednesday, and on Monday our last hunt will take place in the beautiful forest. I feel that the fine air and exercise do me much good; they disperse and drive away sad thoughts, and nothing is so counter to my health as sadness. Last Thursday we hunted a stag that was rather malicious; but one gentleman slipped round a rock behind him and wounded him in the shoulder, so that not being able to butt with his head he was no longer dangerous. Behind my calèche was another carriage in which were three priests,—the Archbishop of Lyons and two abbés; fearing to be attacked by the stag two of them jumped out and flung themselves flat on their stomachs on the ground. I am sorry I did not see that scene, which would have made me laugh, for we old hunters are not so afraid of a stag.

As for what concerns our king in England [George I.] I find it hard to rejoice in his elevation, for I would not trust the English with a hair of my head. I have seen recently what the fine talk of my Lord Peterborough is worth. I wish that our elector, instead of becoming King of England, had been made Roman Emperor, and that the King of England who is here were in possession of the kingdom to which he has a right. I fear that those English, who are so inconstant, will do something before long which will not be to our liking. No one ever became king in a more brilliant manner than King James, being crowned amid cries of joy from the whole nation; yet his people persecuted him so pitilessly that he could scarcely find a spot in which to rest after countless sufferings. If one could only trust the English I should say that it was well for the parliament to be over King George; but when one reads about the revolutions of the English one sees what eternal hatred they feel to kings, and also their inconstancy. The English cannot endure each other; we saw that at the Court of Saint-Germain; they lived there like cats and dogs. I never heard of that philosopher Spinoza; was he a Spaniard? the name sounds Spanish.

King George sent me word by M. Martini that as soon as he reached England he should write to me and keep up a correspondence. Yesterday M. Prior brought me a letter from the king, but it was written by a secretary and not by his own hand. I should not have expected that after the compliment by M. Martini; but I ought not to feel astonished when I think what that king has always been to me—just the reverse of his mother. Whatever happens, I shall ever remember that he is the son of my aunt, and I shall wish him all sorts of prosperity, as I have to-day written to him. The Princess of Wales grieves me; I esteem her sincerely, for I find the best sentiments in her—a rare thing at the present day.

Versailles, 1715.

Yesterday great news arrived about the Princesse des Ursins,—she who has so long governed Spain, and who had gone to meet the new queen, whose camarera-mayor she expected to be. Her pride has ruined her; she had written letters against the young queen, to whom they were shown. When she went to meet the queen she would only go half-way down the staircase; then she criticised her dress, and blamed her for being so long upon the road, and said that if she had been in the king’s place she might have sent her back.[9] Thereupon the queen ordered an officer of the body-guard to take that crazy woman out of her presence and arrest her, and at the same time she sent a courier to the king, making great complaints of the lady. The king answered that she could do what she liked in the matter. So at eleven o’clock at night the princess was put into a carriage with a single maid, lacqueys, and guards, and orders were given to take her to France, which was done.

I cannot pity her, for she has always persecuted my son in a horrible manner; she persuaded the king and queen (the one that is dead) that my son wanted to dethrone them and was conspiring against their lives; which is so false that, do what she could, she was unable to justify her accusations, no matter how slightly, in the eyes of the world. For this reason I do not afflict myself at what has happened to her, and that is natural. I am uneasy lest that malignant devil should come here, for she would not fail to fling her poison on my son and on me, from which may God preserve us! I will tell you later whatever happens in regard to that old woman.

We have just received the sad news of the death of the Archbishop of Cambrai [Fénelon]. He is much regretted. He was a great friend to my son. Also the good Maréchal de Chamilly, who was a very brave and worthy man, died two days ago [The Marquis de Chamilly; to him were addressed the famous “Portuguese Letters”].

There is nothing new here. Everybody is talking of the Persian ambassador who made his entry yesterday, February 6, into Paris. He is the oddest-looking being that was ever seen. He has brought a soothsayer with him, whom he consults on all occasions to know if days and hours are lucky or unlucky. If it is proposed to him to do anything and the day does not prove to be a lucky one, he flies into a fury, grinds his teeth, draws his sabre and his dagger, and wants to exterminate everybody. But I am called to go to church and I cannot tell you more just now.

April, 1715.

To-day I am, as they say in our dear Palatinate, as cross as a bed-bug; and I will give you one specimen. The king, wishing to reward the Princesse des Ursins, who has behaved so horribly to my son, trying to make him out a poisoner, has given her a pension of 40,000 francs. There are two other things that have put me out of temper, which are not worth more than that. Such injustices disgust one with life; but we must hold our tongue and never say what we think.

After dinner my grandson, the Duc de Chartres, came to see me, and I gave him an entertainment suited to his years: it was a triumphal car drawn by a big cat, in which was a little bitch named Andrienne; a pigeon served as coachman, two others were the pages, and a dog was the footman and sat behind. His name is Picard; and when the lady got out of the carriage Picard let down the steps. The cat is named Castille. Picard also allows himself to be saddled; we put a doll on his back and he does all that a circus horse would do. I have also a bitch, whom I call Badine, who knows the cards and will bring whichever I tell her—but enough of such nonsense.

England certainly owes much to the Duchess of Portsmouth. She is the best woman of that class that I ever saw in my life; she is extremely polite and is very agreeable company. In the days of Monsieur we often had her at Saint-Cloud; so I know her very well.

You cannot be surprised, my dear Louise, if I often have reason to be sad; for you must have read the long letter I sent to my aunt, our dear electress, by the hands of M. de Wersebé. The rancour that the vilaine has against me will end only with her life; all that she can imagine to do me harm and grieve me she never omits. She is more angry with me now than ever because I would not see her great friend whom the Queen of Spain dismissed. My son had begged me not to see her, because she has a furious enmity against him and tried to make him out a poisoner. He has not been contented with proving his innocence; he has insisted that all the documents of the inquiry should be taken to Parliament and preserved there. It is therefore very natural that I should refuse to see such a woman; but the vilaine is angry—for like meets like, as the devil said to the coal-heaver. So I must take patience, and not look as if I resented the wrongs done to us.

This morning, as I was washing my hands, my son came into my room and made me a very fine present. He gave me seventeen antique gold coins, as fresh as if they had just come out of the mint. They were found near Modena, as you may have read in the Holland Gazette; he had them secretly carried to Rome. This attention on his part has given me the greatest pleasure,—not so much for the value of the present as for the attention.

As soon as I return to Versailles I will have a copy made of my portrait by Rigaud, who has seized my likeness in a wonderful manner; you will then see, my dear Louise, how old I have grown.

Versailles, August 15th, 1715.

Our king is not well, and that worries me to the point of being half ill myself; I have lost both sleep and appetite. God grant I be mistaken, for if what I fear should happen it would be the greatest misfortune I could meet with. Were I to explain to you all that, you would see; it is so abominable that I cannot think of it without becoming goose-flesh. Say nothing to any one in England of what I have now said to you, but I am very anxious about it.

Mme. de Maintenon has not been ill; she is fresh and in good health; would to God that our king were as well, and then I should be less troubled than I am.

August 27th.

My dear Louise,—I am so troubled that I do not know any longer what I do or what I say; and yet I must answer your kind letter as best I can. I must first tell you we had yesterday the saddest and most touching scene that can be imagined. The king, after preparing himself for death, after having received the sacraments, had the dauphin brought to him, gave him his benediction, and talked to him. He sent for me next, also for the Duchesse de Berry and all his daughters and grandchildren. He bade me farewell in words so tender that I wonder I did not fall down senseless. He assured me that he had always loved me and more than I knew, and that he regretted to have sometimes caused me grief. He asked me to remember him sometimes, adding that he thought I should do so willingly, for he was certain I had always loved him. He said also that he gave me his blessing and offered prayers for the happiness of my whole life. I threw myself on my knees and, taking his hand, I kissed it. He embraced me and then he spoke to the others. He told them that he urged harmony among them. I thought he said that to me, and I answered that for that object as for all else I would obey him as long as I lived. He smiled and said: “It is not for you that I said that; I know you do not need such urging; I said it for the other princesses.”

You can believe in what a state all this has put me. The king has shown a firmness beyond all expression; he gave his orders as if about to start on a journey. He said farewell to all his servants, and recommended them to my son, and made him regent, with a tenderness that penetrated the soul through and through. I think I shall be the next person in the royal family to follow the king if he dies; in the first place, on account of my advanced age, and next because as soon as the king is dead they are going to take the young king to Vincennes and we shall all go to Paris, where the air is so very bad for me. I shall have to stay there in mourning, deprived of fresh air and exercise, and, according to all appearance, I shall fall ill. It is not true that Mme. de Maintenon is dead. She is in perfect health in the king’s chamber, which she never leaves either day or night.

If the king dies, and there is no means of doubting it, it will be to me a misfortune of which you can form no just idea; and that because of certain reasons which must not be written down. I see nothing before me but misery and wretchedness. Residence in Paris is intolerable to me.

September 6th.

It is long since I have written to you, but it was impossible I should do so. The king died Sunday last, at nine o’clock in the morning. You can believe that I have had many visits to make and receive, and that I have received and written many letters. I am extremely troubled both by the loss of the king and by the fact that I must go and live in that cursèd Paris. If I spend a year there I shall be horribly ill; for that reason I want to quit it as soon as I can and go to Saint-Cloud. All this worries me much, but complaining does no good. I am very frank and very natural, and I say out all that I have in my heart. I must tell you that it is a great consolation to me to see the whole people, the troops and parliament rallying to my son and publicly proclaiming him regent. His enemies, who plotted round the death-bed of the king, are now disconcerted, and their cabal has lost ground. But my son takes these matters so much to heart that he has no rest either day or night; I fear he may fall ill, and many sad ideas come into my head, but I must not tell them.

My son has pronounced a speech in Parliament and they tell me he did not speak badly. The young king is very delicate; the ministers who governed under the late king keep their places, and as there is no doubt that they are quite as curious as they ever were, letters will continue to be opened. It is quite impossible that I should keep my health in Paris, for what preserved it was fresh air and exercise, hunting, and walking. But I ought to learn to resign myself to the will of God; the frightful wickedness and falseness of this world disgust me with life; I cannot hope to make the people love me—I am called to sit down to table, so I cannot read over my letter; excuse its faults.

Paris, September 10th, 1715.

Here we are in this sad town. Last night I spent in weeping, and have given myself a bad headache. My son has given me a new apartment which is, beyond comparison, much superior to the old one; but I am always uncomfortable here. This morning I began to write, but could only accomplish a few lines, I have such a fearful crowd of people about me, and my head aches so that I know not what I write or what I do. Yesterday they took the late king to Saint-Denis. The royal household is dispersed; the young king was taken yesterday to Vincennes; Mme. de Berry went to Saint-Cloud; my son’s wife and I came here; and my son came too, after accompanying the king to Vincennes; I don’t know where the others have gone.

I am not surprised, my dear Louise, that the king’s death touched your heart; but what I wrote you was nothing to what we saw and heard. The king, of himself, was kind and just. But the old woman ruled him so completely that he did nothing except by her will and that of the ministers; he had no confidence in any but her and his confessor; and as the good king was very little educated, the Jesuits and the old woman on one side, and the ministers on the other, made him, between them, do exactly as they pleased,—the ministers being, for the most part, creatures of the old vilaine. So I can say with truth that all the evil that was done was not the king’s own act; he was misled and imposed upon.

Yesterday they took the young king to parliament for his first lit de justice. The regency of my son was enregistered; so now it is a sure and certain thing.

I know that my son wants me to find pleasure in living here; but it is not in his power to make it so. I wish I could have a fever; for I have promised not to leave Paris unless I am ill, and headaches, which I am sure to have as long as I am here, will not count; but as soon as I have a fever I can return to my dear Saint-Cloud. My son has many other things to do than to think of my pleasures and conveniences. He greatly needs that we should pray to God for him; he seems to me resolved to follow the king’s last orders and live in amity with his relations. I think that anything he directs himself will go well; but many things must, necessarily, escape his direction. To show that he does not wish to govern without other law than his own caprice, he has already created various councils,—one for civil affairs, one for ecclesiastical matters; there is also a council for foreign affairs, and for war. He can do nothing but what has already been decided upon in those councils; it is difficult to believe that the council on ecclesiastical matters, which is composed of priests, will be favourable to the Reformers. I am quite determined not to meddle in anything. France has too long, to its sorrow, been governed by women; I will not, so far as concerns me, give a handle to any one to lay that blame on my son; and I hope that my example may open his eyes, and that he will not allow himself to be ruled by any woman.

Saint-Cloud is to me a spot of enchantment; and with good reason, for there is not in the world a more delightful residence. But if I had gone there, as I wished, all Paris would have detested me, and out of consideration for my son, I was bound to abstain from going. Do not think, dear Louise, that the king’s death has rendered me, as I desired, freer in my actions; we are forced to live according to the customs of the country, and are in no wise masters of our own conduct. In my situation, one is truly the victim of greatness, and one must be resigned to do that for which we have no inclination. Do not be grateful to me for writing to you in the midst of my troubles; nothing soothes the heart so much as to tell our griefs to those we love, who give to our afflictions a real sympathy.

It is true that everybody thought the king dead when Mme. de Maintenon left him; but he had only lost consciousness for a time, and afterwards recovered it. I do not want to say anything more about these sad matters, which affect me cruelly. The king showed the greatest firmness up to his last moment. He said to Mme. de Maintenon, smiling: “I have always heard it said that it was difficult to die; I assure you that I find it very easy.” He remained twenty-four hours without speaking to any one; but during that time he prayed and repeated constantly: “My God, have pity upon me; Lord, I am waiting to appear before you; why do you not take me, my God?” He then repeated with much fervour the Lord’s prayer and the Creed, and he died recommending his soul to God.

September 17th, 1715.

Parliament has recognized my son’s rights to the regency, rights which his birth bestowed upon him indisputably. The king had told him he had made a will in which he would find nothing to complain of; and yet that will is found to be wholly in favour of the Duc du Maine; it is not therefore difficult to divine who dictated it—but do not let us talk of it.

My son has too often heard me speak of you not to know you and appreciate you, and he bids me offer you his affectionate compliments. The duties with which he is charged are far from easy; he finds everything left in a very miserable state; time is necessary to repair the situation; nothing presents itself that is not care and trouble, and for my son, as for me, the future does not appear under flattering colours. More than forty placards attacking him have been posted in Paris, and the dukes and peers are caballing against him in Parliament; but my son is so beloved by the people and the troops that his enemies are having their trouble for their pains, and all they get is the shame of it. I admit, however, that I am very uneasy in seeing him the target of so much animosity.

Ah! my dear Louise, you do not know this country. They laud my son to the skies, but only for the purpose, each man for himself, of getting some profit from it; fifty persons want the same office, and as it can only be given to one, forty-nine malcontents are made, who become rabid enemies. My son works so hard from six in the morning till midnight that I fear his health will suffer.

October, 1715.

I have been to Saint-Cloud while the Duchesse de Berry came here. Between ourselves, I wish to have nothing to do with her; we do not sympathize. I live politely with her, as I would with a stranger, but I do not see her often, and I will not concern myself with anything that she does, or that her mother and her sisters do; I busy myself about my own affairs. The Court is not what it is in Germany, and no longer what it was in the days of Monsieur, when we dined together, and all of us met every evening in the state salons. In these days we live apart; my son takes his meals alone; I the same; his wife the same; she is so lazy she is never able to resolve at a given moment to do the slightest thing; she lies on a sofa all day, and Mme. de Berry follows that example at the Luxembourg; so you see, my dear Louise, that there cannot be any Court. Ah! you do not know the French; as long as they hope to obtain what they want they are charming; but out of fifty aspirants, forty-nine enemies are made, who cabal and play the devil. I know the Court and State too well to rejoice for a moment that my son is regent.

I have kept the word I gave you, and have earnestly entreated for the poor Reformers who are at the galleys; I have obtained a promise—but just now No is said to none. I do not know what my son may have said to Lord Stair about the Reformers, but I can assure you that when I spoke to him he gave me good hope, saying at the same time that there were very strong reasons which prevented him from doing the thing promptly.

In the days of Cardinal Mazarin they wrote horrible books against him. He appeared much irritated, and sent for all the copies as if he intended to burn them up. When he had got them all he sold them secretly and made ten thousand crowns out of them. Then he laughed and said: “The French are pretty fellows; as long as I let them sing and write, they will let me do just as I choose.”

Mme. de Maintenon is at Saint-Cyr, in the institution which she founded herself. She was never the king’s mistress, but something much higher. She was governess to Mme. de Montespan’s children, and from that she got a footing in salons, but she went much farther. The devil in hell cannot be worse than she has been; her ambition has flung all France into wretchedness. La Fontanges was a good girl; I knew her well; she was one of my maids-of-honour, handsome from head to foot, but she had no judgment.

I think that many people will declare themselves against King George, for the Chevalier de Saint-George has gone to Scotland. They told me to-night the details of his departure. He was at Commercy with the Prince de Vaudemont and was hunting a stag. After the hunt they sat at supper till midnight. On retiring to his chamber he said he was tired, and told his servants to let him sleep till he called them. Two hours after noon, as he gave no sign of life, his servants were frightened; entering his apartment and not finding him in his bed, they ran in terror with the news to the Prince de Vaudemont. The latter behaved as if he knew nothing, and said that a search must be made immediately. At the end of an hour the prince ordered all the portcullises raised, so that no one was able to leave the château for three days. During this time the chevalier reached Bretagne, and jumped into a fishing-boat which took him out to a Scotch vessel in which there were several lords, with whom he went to Scotland. If to-morrow I hear anything new about this, and do not die in the course of the night, I will tell you more.

No one knows what will be the result of the affair, but I am pained for both rivals. King George is the son of my dear aunt, the electress, which makes him as dear to me as if he were my own child. On the other hand the Pretender is also my relation; he is the best man in the world; on all occasions he and the queen, his mother, have shown me the greatest friendship. I cannot wish harm to either the one or the other.

I ought to tell you that it would be sovereignly unjust on the part of Lord Stair to accuse my son of conniving in the flight of the Chevalier. How could he know what happened at Commercy, or guess that the Pretender was going incognito to Bretagne? My son did not know it for a week; when he heard it the affair was over. The Chevalier de Saint-George is the best and most polite man in the world. He asked Lord Douglas: “What can I do to win the sympathy of my people?” Douglas answered: “Embark, take a dozen Jesuits with you, and as soon as you arrive, hang them publicly; nothing will please the people like that.”

M. Leibnitz, to whom I sometimes write, assures me that I do not write German badly; this has given me great pleasure, for I should not like to forget my mother tongue.

The third daughter of Mme. d’Orléans, Louise-Adélaïde, is well brought up and is not ugly. She firmly persists in being a nun; but I think she has no vocation for it. I do my best to turn her from the notion; but she has always had this folly in her head. She has very pretty hands and a skin that is naturally white and pink.

Mme. d’Orléans has had six daughters. The first died when she was two years old; the second is the Duchesse de Berry; the third is seventeen, they call her Mlle. de Chartres, and it is she who wants to be a nun; she is the prettiest of them all both in face and figure; the fourth is Charlotte-Aglaé, Mlle. de Valois; she will be fifteen in October. Then comes the Duc de Chartres, who is twelve in August. The fifth girl, Louise-Élisabeth, Mlle. de Montpensier, who is in a convent at Beauvais, was six on the eleventh of this month;[10] and finally Mlle. de Beaujolais, who is only a year old; Mme. d’Orléans is again pregnant. No one ever thought of marrying Mlle. de Chartres to the Chevalier de Saint-George; it is true that it was rumoured about, but the persons whom it concerned never thought of it.

Mme. d’Orléans is not of my opinion as regards her daughters; she would like to have them all nuns. She is not stupid enough to fancy that that would take them to heaven; but she desires it from pure laziness; for she is the laziest woman in the world, and she is afraid, if she has them near her, of the trouble of bringing them up. So she does not trouble herself about them; she lets them quarrel and do what they like. All that is without my approbation; and they must get out of it as they can. I am convinced that Mme. d’Orléans’ ailments and weaknesses come from the fact that she is always in bed or on a sofa; she eats and drinks lying down. It is pure indolence in her. That is why we cannot take our meals together. She has not spoken to me since the death of the king.

Mme. de Berry is red. When she wishes to please she ought to talk, for she has natural eloquence. She keeps around her those who constantly deceive her. I say nothing to her now; she has intelligence, but has been very ill brought up. I no longer consider her as one of my grandchildren; she goes her way, and I go mine; I do not concern myself with her, nor she with me.

Paris, 1716.

There never were two brothers so different as the late king and Monsieur; and yet they loved each other much. The king was tall with fair hair, or rather a light-brown; he had a manly air and an extremely fine face. Monsieur was not disagreeable in appearance, but he was very small, his hair was black as jet, the eyebrows thick and brown, with large dark eyes, a very long and rather narrow face, a big nose, a very small mouth, and shocking teeth; he had the manners of a woman rather than those of a man; he did not like either horses or hunting; he cared for nothing but cards, holding a court, good eating, dancing, and dressing himself; in a word, he took pleasure in all that women like. The king loved hunting, music, the theatre; Monsieur liked nothing but great assemblies and masked balls; the king liked gallantry with women; but I do not believe that in all his life Monsieur was ever in love. He was so fond of the sound of bells that he always went to Paris to spend All Saints night expressly to hear them ring as they do there the livelong night. He laughed about it himself, but declared that ringing gave him the greatest pleasure. I never let him go anywhere alone, except by his express orders. Monsieur was very devout; but he was brave. The soldiers in the army used to say of him: “He is more afraid of sun and dust than he is of guns,” and that was very true. The Chevalier de Lorraine was a wicked man, but the rest of his dear friends were no better. Some years before the late Monsieur’s death he begged my forgiveness.

My son has studied much, he has a good memory, he seizes everything with facility. He does not resemble either his father or his mother. Monsieur had a long, narrow face, whereas my son has a square one. His walk is like that of Monsieur, and he makes the same motions with his hands. Monsieur had a very small mouth and villanous teeth; my son has a large mouth and beautiful teeth. He is too prejudiced in favour of his own nation. Though he sees every day how false and deceitful his compatriots are, he firmly believes there are no people on earth to be compared with the French.

I assure you that everything passed in all honour between my son and the Queen of Spain. I do not know whether he had the good fortune to please the queen, but he never was in love with her. He says she has a good expression, and a fine figure, but that neither her features nor her manners are to his taste. I certainly cannot deny that he is a lover of women; but he has his caprices, and everybody does not please him. The grand style suits him less than the dissipated, loose ways of the opera-dancers. I often ridicule him for it.

Our little king is now in the Tuileries in perfect health; he has never been really ill; he is very lively, and does not keep in one position for a single instant. To tell you the truth, he is very badly brought up; they let him do just what he likes for fear of making him ill. I am convinced that if they corrected him he would be less quick-tempered; and they do him great harm by letting him follow his caprices. But everybody wants to gain the good graces of a king, no matter how young he is.

Mme. la Duchesse learned from her mother and her aunt [Mmes. de Montespan and de Thiange] to turn people into ridicule; they never did anything else; everybody was a butt for their satire under pretext of amusing the king. The children, who were always there, never knew or heard aught else. It was a bad school, but not so dangerous as that of the children’s governess; for the latter went seriously to work, without any intention of amusing, and told the king all sorts of evil of everybody, under pretence of religion and charity and reforming the neighbour. In this way the king was given a bad opinion of the whole Court, and the old woman was able to prevent the king from liking to be with any others than herself and her creatures—they were the only perfect beings, exempt from all faults. This was really the more perilous because lettres de cachet sending persons to prison or exile, followed on such denunciations,—things which Mme. de Montespan never procured. When she had well laughed at any one she was satisfied and went no further.

Mme. la Duchesse has three charming daughters; one of them, Mlle. de Clermont, is very beautiful, but I think her sister, the young Princesse de Conti, is much more agreeable. The mother is not more beautiful than her daughters, but she has more grace, a better countenance, and more engaging ways; wit sparkles in her eyes, also malice. I always say she is like a pretty cat which lets you feel her claws even while she plays. She laughs at everybody; but is very amusing, and turns things into ridicule in such a pleasant way that you can’t help laughing. She is very good company,—always gay, and makes the liveliest sallies; she is very insinuating, and when she wants to please a person she can take all shapes; in her life she never was out of temper, and if she is false (as she really is) there never was any one more agreeable; she knows how to adapt herself to every one’s humour, and you would think she had a genuine sympathy for those to whom she shows it, but you must not trust her.

Paris, 1716.

Cardinal de Noailles is certainly a virtuous cardinal of great merit, which all cardinals are not. We have four here, each different. Three have this in common, that they are all as false as gibbet-wood, but in face and temper they are quite different. Cardinal de Polignac is well-bred; he has capacity; he is insinuating, his voice is soft; he is too much given to politics and sycophancy, which makes him commit the faults for which people blame him. Cardinal de Rohan has a fine face, like his mother [Mme. de Soubise, one of Louis XIV.’s mistresses], but he has no figure; he is vain as a peacock, full of whims, intriguing, a slave to the Jesuits; he thinks he governs everything, but really governs nothing; he believes that he is without an equal in this world. Cardinal de Bissy is ugly; he has the face of a clumsy peasant; he is proud, malignant, and false; more dissimulating than any one imagines; a sickening flatterer, you see his falseness in his eyes; he has capacity, but uses it only to do harm. These three cardinals could put the Noailles in a sack and sell him without his knowing it, as the proverb says; they are all three far more shrewd than he. Bissy and Tartuffe are as like as two drops of water; Bissy has just Tartuffe’s manners.

Wolves are going about in bands of eight and ten and attacking travellers; the extreme severity of the cold is the reason of this; it is causing great misfortunes. In Paris eight poor washerwomen were at work on a boat; the ice cut the rope like a razor; the boat was crushed into bits; one of the women had the presence of mind to jump from one cake of ice to another, and they had time to throw her a rope and save her; but all the others perished. The head of one was cut off by the ice, and the body of another was cut through; that was an awful thing, and what made it more terrible was that the woman was pregnant, and when the ice cut her open the head of a child appeared. What can be imagined more dreadful than that!