Cardinal Mazarin perceiving that the King had less readiness than his
brother, was apprehensive lest the latter should become too learned; he
therefore enjoined the preceptor to let him play, and not to suffer him
to apply to his studies.
"What can you be thinking of, M. la Mothe le Vayer," said the Cardinal;
"would you try to make the King's brother a clever man? If he should be
more wise than his brother, he would not be qualified for implicit
obedience."
Never were two brothers more totally different in their appearance than
the King and Monsieur. The King was tall, with light hair; his mien was
good and his deportment manly. Monsieur, without having a vulgar air,
was very small; his hair and eye-brows were quite black, his eyes were
dark, his face long and narrow, his nose large, his mouth small, and his
teeth very bad; he was fond of play, of holding drawing-rooms, of eating,
dancing and dress; in short, of all that women are fond of. The King
loved the chase, music and the theatre; my husband rather affected large
parties and masquerades: his brother was a man of great gallantry, and I
do not believe my husband was ever in love during his life. He danced
well, but in a feminine manner; he could not dance like a man because his
shoes were too high-heeled. Excepting when he was with the army, he
would never get on horseback. The soldiers used to say that he was more
afraid of being sun-burnt and of the blackness of the powder than of the
musket-balls; and it was very true. He was very fond of building.
Before he had the Palais Royal completed, and particularly the grand
apartment, the place was, in my opinion, perfectly horrible, although in
the Queen-mother's time it had been very much admired. He was so fond of
the ringing of bells that he used to go to Paris on All Souls' Day for
the purpose of hearing the bells, which are rung during the whole of the
vigils on that day he liked no other music, and was often laughed at for
it by his friends. He would join in the joke, and confess that a peal of
bells delighted him beyond all expression. He liked Paris better than
any other place, because his secretary was there, and he lived under less
restraint than at Versailles. He wrote so badly that he was often
puzzled to read his own letters, and would bring them to me to decipher
them.
"Here, Madame," he used to say, laughing, "you are accustomed to my
writing; be so good as to read me this, for I really cannot tell what I
have been writing." We have often laughed at it.
He was of a good disposition enough, and if he had not yielded so
entirely to the bad advice of his favourites, he would have been the best
master in the world. I loved him, although he had caused me a great deal
of pain; but during the last three years of his life that was totally
altered. I had brought him to laugh at his own weakness, and even to
take jokes without caring for them. From the period that I had been
calumniated and accused, he would suffer no one again to annoy me; he had
the most perfect confidence in me, and took my part so decidedly, that
his favourites dared not practise against me. But before that I had
suffered terribly. I was just about to be happy, when Providence thought
fit to deprive me of my poor husband. For thirty years I had been
labouring to gain him to myself, and, just as my design seemed to be
accomplished, he died. He had been so much importuned upon the subject
of my affection for him that he begged me for Heaven's sake not to love
him any longer, because it was so troublesome. I never suffered him to
go alone anywhere without his express orders.
The King often complained that he had not been allowed to converse
sufficiently with people in his youth; but taciturnity was a part of his
character, for Monsieur, who was brought up with him, conversed with
everybody. The King often laughed, and said that Monsieur's chattering
had put him out of conceit with talking. We used to joke Monsieur upon
his once asking questions of a person who came to see him.
"I suppose, Monsieur," said he, "you come from the army?"
"No, Monsieur," replied the visitor, "I have never joined it."
"You arrive here, then, from your country house?"
"Monsieur, I have no country house."
"In that case, I imagine you are living at Paris with your family?"
"Monsieur, I am not married."
Everybody present at this burst into a laugh, and Monsieur in some
confusion had nothing more to say. It is true that Monsieur was more
generally liked at Paris than the King, on account of his affability.
When the King, however, wished to make himself agreeable to any person,
his manners were the most engaging possible, and he won people's hearts
much more readily than my husband; for the latter, as well as my son, was
too generally civil. He did not distinguish people sufficiently, and
behaved very well only to those who were attached to the Chevalier de
Lorraine and his favourites.
Monsieur was not of a temper to feel any sorrow very deeply. He loved
his children too well even to reprove them when they deserved it; and if
he had occasion to make complaints of them, he used to come to me with
them.
"But, Monsieur," I have said, "they are your children as well as mine,
why do you not correct them?"
He replied, "I do not know how to scold, and besides they would not care
for me if I did; they fear no one but you."
By always threatening the children with me, he kept them in constant fear
of me. He estranged them from me as much as possible, but he left me to
exercise more authority over my elder daughter and over the Queen of
Sicily than over my son; he could not, however, prevent my occasionally
telling them what I thought. My daughter never gave me any cause to
complain of her. Monsieur was always jealous of the children, and was
afraid they would love me better than him: it was for this reason that he
made them believe I disapproved of almost all they did. I generally
pretended not to see this contrivance.
Without being really fond of any woman, Monsieur used to amuse himself
all day in the company of old and young ladies to please the King: in
order not to be out of the Court fashion, he even pretended to be
amorous; but he could not keep up a deception so contrary to his natural
inclination. Madame de Fiennes said to him one day, "You are in much
more danger from the ladies you visit, than they are from you." It was
even said that Madame de Monaco had attempted to give him some violent
proofs of her affection. He pretended to be in love with Madame de
Grancey; but if she had had no other lover than Monsieur she might have
preserved her reputation. Nothing culpable ever passed between them; and
he always endeavoured to avoid being alone with her. She herself said
that whenever they happened to be alone he was in the greatest terror,
and pretended to have the toothache or the headache. They told a story
of the lady asking him to touch her, and that he put on his gloves before
doing so. I have often heard him rallied about this anecdote, and have
often laughed at it.
Madame de Grancey was one of the most foolish women in the world. She
was very handsome at the time of my arrival in France, and her figure was
as good as her face; besides, she was not so much disregarded by others
as by my husband; for, before the Chevalier de Lorraine became her lover,
she had had a child. I knew well that nothing had passed between
Monsieur and Grancey, and I was never jealous of them; but I could not
endure that she should derive a profit from my household, and that no
person could purchase an employment in it without paying a douceur to
her. I was also often indignant at her insolence to me, and at her
frequently embroiling me with Monsieur. It was for these reasons, and
not from jealousy, as was fancied by those who knew nothing about it,
that I sometimes sharply reprimanded her. The Chevalier de Lorraine,
upon his return from Rome, became her declared lover. It was through his
contrivances, and those of D'Effiat, that she was brought into the house
of Monsieur, who really cared nothing about her. Her continued
solicitations and the behaviour of the Chevalier de Lorraine had so much
disgusted Monsieur, that if he had lived he would have got rid of them
both.
He had become tired of the Chevalier de Lorraine because he had found out
that his attachment to him proceeded from interested motives. When
Monsieur, misled by his favourites, did something which was neither just
nor expedient, I used to say to him, "Out of complaisance to the
Chevalier de Lorraine, you put your good sense into your pocket, and
button it up so tight that it cannot be seen."
After my husband's death I saw Grancey only once; I met her in the
garden. When she ceased to be handsome, she fell into utter despair;
and so great a change took place in her appearance that no one would have
known her. Her nose, before so beautiful, grew long and large, and was
covered with pimples, over each of which she put a patch; this had a very
singular effect; the red and white paint, too, did not adhere to her
face. Her eyes were hollow and sunken, and the alteration which this had
caused in her face cannot be imagined. In Spain they, lock up all the
ladies at night, even to the septuagenary femmes de chambre. When
Grancey followed our Queen to Spain as dame d'atour, she was locked up in
the evening, and was in great grief about it.
When she was dying, she cried, "Ah, mon Dieu, must I die, who have never
once thought of death?"
She had never done anything but sit at play with her lovers until five or
six o'clock in the morning, feast, and smoke tobacco, and follow
uncontrolled her natural inclinations.
When she reached her climacteric, she said, in despair, "Alas, I am
growing old, I shall have no more children."
This was exceedingly amusing; and her friends, as well as her enemies,
laughed at it. She once had a high dispute with Madame de Bouillon. One
evening, Grancey chose to hide herself in one of the recesses formed by
the windows in the chamber of the former lady, who, not thinking she was
heard, conversed very freely with the Marquise d'Allure, respecting the
libertine life of Grancey; in the course of which she said several
strange things respecting the treatment which her lovers had experienced
from her. Grancey at length rushed out, and fell to abusing Madame de
Bouillon like a Billingsgate. The latter was not silent, and some
exceedingly elegant discourse passed between them. Madame de Bouillon
made a complaint against Grancey; in the first place, for having listened
to her conversation; and in the second, for having insulted her in her
own house. Monsieur reproved Grancey; told her that she had brought this
inconvenience upon herself by her own indiscretion, and ordered her to be
reconciled with her adversary.
"How can I," said Grancey, "be reconciled to Madame de Bouillon, after
all the wicked things she has said about me?" But after a moment's
reflection she added, "Yes, I can, for she did not say I was ugly."
They afterwards embraced, and made it up.
.........................................
Monsieur was taken ill at ten o'clock at night, but he did not die until
the next day at noon. I can never think of this night without horror.
I remained with him from ten at night until five the next morning, when
he lost all consciousness.--[The Duc d'Orleans died of apoplexy on the
9th June, 1701]
The Electors of Germany would not permit Monsieur to write to them in the
same style as the King did.