I wrote you that the Duc and Duchesse du Maine were the leaders of the
plot; since then the proof of the duke's culpability has been found in
a letter to him from Alberoni, in which are these words: "As soon as
war is declared, fire all your mines." Nothing can be clearer. They
are great wretches.
Though the treason is discovered, all the traitors are not yet known.
My son laughs and says: "I hold the head and tail of the monster,
but not its body as yet." The Duc and Duchesse du Maine have written
on all sides to justify themselves. There is such wickedness and
falsehood in what they say that I cannot endure the thought of it. No
one can imagine the libels they have spread in the provinces about my
poor son; they have also sent them to foreign countries.
Parliament is now on good terms with my son, and has rendered a
judgment wholly in his favour; that shows how the du Maines had
stirred it up against him. The Jesuits may, very likely, be secretly
plotting against my son, for all the partisans of the Constitution
[bull Unigenitus] are his adversaries; but they keep themselves quiet,
and nothing is shown to compromise them. They are clever people. Mme.
d'Orléans is beginning to laugh and show satisfaction; which worries
me, because I know she has consulted the president of parliament
[Mesmes] and other persons to learn whether in case of her husband's
death, she could be appointed regent with her son. The president
answered no; that the regency would devolve on M. le Duc, which answer
seemed to greatly disturb her.
My son made me laugh yesterday. I asked him how the Maintenon was; he
answered, "Wonderfully well." I said, "How can that be, at her age?"
to which he replied: "Don't you know that the good God to punish the
devil makes him stay a very long time in a villanous body?"
PARIS, April 20, 1719.
Saturday evening we lost a pious soul at Saint-Cyr, the old Maintenon.
The news of the arrest of the Duc du Maine and his wife made her
faint away, and it may have been the cause of her death, for from
that moment she had no rest. Anger and the loss of the hope to reign
through him turned her blood and gave her the measles, and for twenty
days she had continual fever. A storm which came up made the disease
strike inward, and it stifled her. She was eighty-six years old. I
have it in my head that what grieved her most at the last was leaving
my son and me behind her in good health.
She died like a young person. She gave herself eighty-two years, but
she was really eighty-six. If she had died twenty years ago I should
have cordially rejoiced, but now it gives me neither pleasure nor
pain. There is nothing to wonder at in her dying like a young person.
In the other world, where all are equal and there is no difference
in rank, it will be decided whether she stays with the king or the
paralytic Scarron; but if the king knows then all that was hidden from
him in this world, there is no doubt he will return her very willingly
to Scarron.