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.