Memoirs of the Court of Louis Xiv. and of the Regency — Volume 02

Section Viii.--Philippe I., Duc D'orleans.

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.

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