fall into the king's hands. His Majesty
sends for La Conti; and, to cure her for the
future of indulging in intrigues with men
below her station, makes her read aloud
both her own impassioned letters to
Clermont, and his still warmer ones to La Choin,
filled with every kind of ridicule and
insolence against herself. La Conti is then
dismissed with a severe reprimand; La Choin is
banished; Clermont cashiered; but
Monsieur de Luxembourg is let off.

To conclude at once with La Choin.
Monseigneur was too deeply smitten to be thrown
off the scent so easily. He discovers her
retreat, and takes her to live with him at
Meudon, publicly, à la Maintenon, whereby
the whole court is at her feet. Her power is
second only to that of the Maintenon herself.
She is courted and caressed; gives
herself airs of embryonic sovereignty; sits in an
arm-chair before Monseigneur, while the
Duchesse de Bourgogne, wife to Monseigneur's
eldest son and heir presumptive of the throne,
dares sit only on a foot-stool; never rises
for said Duchesse; speaks of her familiarly,
and is so highly placed that "every one—even
the Duchesse de Bourgogne—crawled before
this creature, the favourite of the heir to the
throne," as Saint Simon says.

Monsieur du Maine, the king's eldest
illegitimate son by Madame de Montespan,
wishes to marry. He is given the choice of
the Prince de Condé's three miniature daughters,
who are all so small, that the prince, a
tall and powerful man himself, used to say,
his race would soon dwindle down to
nothing, if it continued to decrease as it had
done. An inch of height settles the question.
Monsieur du Maine chooses the second
daughter, and the eldest is so bitterly
wounded at not being married before her
sister, that she falls ill and dies.

The Duchesse of Hanover is sister to the
Princesse de Condé. She wanted the illegitimate
Du Maine for one of her own daughters,
and quarrels with her sister for cutting the
grass from under her feet. She is the wife
of that same Hanoverian Duke who shut up
his wife's lover, in an oven. Monsieur du
Maine was Louis' darling. He made him
general of the forces then in action. He
lost an engagement, drew back from a
victory, acted like a poltroon, and became
the jest of all France. When news of his
disgrace and incapacity came to the king he
said nothing, but was in so irritable a state,
that he caned a wretched footman who
pocketed a biscuit while clearing the dessert,
and broke his stick across his back. That
evening, coming out from Madame de
Maintenon's apartment, he met the Père la
Chaise.

"My father," says the king, excitedly, and
in a loud voice, "I have beaten a knave, and
broken my cane across his shoulders: but I
do not think I have offended Heaven." The
whole court quailed before that august
confession: it was Jove condescending to a
mortal: and the father hastened to assure
him that he had not offended Heaven.

The king's excessive enmity to the Prince
of Orange, was owing to his having offered
him one of his daughters in marriage; when
the prince returned for answer, that "the
House of Orange was accustomed to marry
the legitimate daughters of great kings, and
not their bastards." Louis never forgave
that blunt refusal, and nearly died from
vexation when forced to recognise the prince
as King of England.

Saint Simon will also marry. He is only
twenty: but he is without family connection
at Court, and he thinks that a father-in-law
of standing will advance his interests. He
addresses himself to the Duc de Beauvilliers,
whose daughters he has never seen; but "it
is of Monsieur and Madame," he tells them,
"he is enamoured, not of the young ladies."
The Duc refuses him. The eldest daughter
inclines to a convent, the second is deformed,
and the third must not be married until her
eldest sister has professed, or is married
herself. Saint Simon is in despair, but Beauvilliers
is inflexible to his views of right; and finally
they separate, after many harassing
interviews—Beauvilliers retreating to his "lands,"
Saint Simon to his secret friend and confidant,
La Trappe. His friends then wish to
marry him to a Mademoiselle de Royau,
young, rich, and noble; but an orphan. And,
as Saint Simon wants family connection
rather than a wife, he declines. At last he
settles with the Maréchal de Lorges, for his
eldest daughter: and, on the eighth of April,
sixteen hundred and ninety-five, they are
married, at midnight, at the Hôtel de Lorges,
after the usual state supper. The next day,
after dinner, the bride goes to bed, and there
receives her visitors. The day after, they
are at Court, where they are received by
Madame de Maintenon and the king with
marked distinction: and the day following,
Madame de Saint Simon again goes to bed,—
this time, for convenience, in the ground-floor
apartment of the Duchesse d'Arpajou, and
there and thus receives the Court.

Shortly after this, Madame de Saint
Simon's young sister of fifteen is married,
without a dowry, to Monsieur de Lauzun, of
sixty-three. De Lauzun thought, that to
marry the daughter of the Maréchal de
Lorges would give him the command of an
army; and De Lorges was so well pleased to
get a daughter off his hands without paying
for a husband with a dower, that he made no
scruple of such a husband as De Lauzun. The
young bride received all her company in bed,
as her sister had done; but, on the wedding-
night, De Lauzun caused great scandal by
his obstinate rejection of the public
disrobing. He would have no one with him but
his valet, and he would be in his own private
dressing-room. The Court was scandalised,
and thought him very indelicate. He bore