The late king told me a story about the Queen of Sweden, Christina.
She never wore night-caps, but she twisted a towel round her head.
Once, not being able to sleep, she had music played beside her bed.
As the concert pleased her she suddenly protruded her head beyond
the curtains and called out, "Devil's death! how well they play!"
The eunuchs and Italians, who are not the bravest of the brave, were
so terrified at the aspect of that singular figure that they were
struck speechless, and the music had to stop. We can still see at
Fontainebleau in the great salon the blood of the man she caused to
be murdered there. She did not wish that all that he knew about her
should come to be known, and she thought certain things would surely
be divulged unless she put an end to his life. He had already begun
to tattle, out of jealousy for another man who had supplanted him
in her good graces. She was very vindictive and given to all sorts
of debauchery. If she had not had so much intellect no one could
have endured her. She owed her vices to Frenchmen, especially to old
Bourdelot, who was the doctor of the great Condé; he encouraged her in
her license. She talked of things that the worst men only could have
imagined. She was considered to be an hermaphrodite. The Frenchmen who
were with her in Stockholm were very depraved men, and it was they who
led her into such licentiousness. Duke Frederick Augustus of Brunswick
was charmed with Christina; he said that in all his life he had never
met with any woman who had so much intellect and was so agreeable
and diverting; he never found the time long when he was with her. I
told him I heard that her talk was most licentious; he said that was
true, but that she knew so well how to present things that they did
not inspire disgust. This queen could never please women, because she
despised them one and all.