My Lorraine children leave me in three days; my heart is full; my
daughter would gladly have stayed longer; but the duke was anxious to
return. My daughter is, thank God, so firmly fixed in good principles
that she can mix in all society without fear of contamination. But
nothing was ever seen like the youth of the present day; it makes
one's hair stand on end. I know a daughter who encourages the
debauchery of her father; she is not ashamed to procure him a pretty
waiting-maid, and her mother looks on and lets it be done, so that she
may be left in peace [evidently the Duchesse de Berry]. In short, one
sees and hears of nothing but shocking things. My daughter tells me
that though I wrote them to her she could not believe me, until she
saw them daily with her own eyes. Youth no longer believes in God, and
neglects all exercise of religion; consequently God abandons it. It is
sad to live in a period when honest people have such surroundings; it
inspires universal disgust. I thank God that my daughter knows what
virtue is and has a righteous horror for the life that people are
leading; that is a great comfort to me.
I hear that in Germany the princesses are beginning to go about and
act as they do in France; it was not so in my day. The times have
come, as Holy Scripture says, when seven women run after one man;
never were women what they are at present; they act as if their only
happiness was sleeping with men. What one sees and hears here daily,
even about the most eminent personages, is not to be written down.
When my daughter lived here it was not so; therefore she is in a state
of astonishment that puts her sometimes beside herself and has more
than once made me laugh. She cannot accustom herself to see, openly
at the opera, women who bear the noblest names behave to men with a
familiarity that indicates something very different from hatred. She
says to me sometimes, "Madame! Madame!"
I answer: "Well, my daughter, what can I do? those are the manners of
the day."
"But such manners are infamous," she replies, with truth. Never was
the mercy of God needed as it is now, for this epoch of ours is
terrible. One hears of nothing but quarrels, disputes, robberies,
murders, and vices of all kinds; the old serpent, the devil, has
shaken off his chains and reigns in the air. It behooves all good
Christians to give themselves up to prayer.
The Princess of Wales writes me that the Countess of Shrewsbury
[Madame spells the name Schoresburg] flung herself at the knees of the
king to ask pardon for her brother, who is condemned to be hanged. The
king replied that if he granted that pardon he should rouse the anger
of the English, who would say the guilty man was spared because he was
a foreigner, whereas were he English he would be hanged without pity.
He deserved severe punishment, but I pity his sister; it is a dreadful
thing for nobles to hang on a gibbet. Things are going from bad to
worse in England, and I dare write nothing more upon that subject.
All Paris says that King George intends to declare publicly that the
Prince of Wales is not his son, and, to injure him still further, that
he means to marry the Schulenberg, now Duchess of Munster. I told this
to Lord Stair; he answered that nothing of the kind would happen, and
I need not trouble myself.
In England, and in France too, the dukes and lords have such excessive
pride that they think themselves above everybody; and if allowed to
have their way they would consider themselves superior to the princes
of the blood; some of them are not really nobles. I rebuked one of our
dukes very neatly one day. As he was placing himself at the king's
table above the Prince de Deux Ponts I said, quite loud: "How comes M.
le Duc de Saint-Simon to be pressing up to the Prince de Deux Ponts?
does he want him to take one of his sons as page?" Everybody laughed
so loud that he had to go away.