The pleasures of the table seem now to have absorbed the greater part of her life.  Read what her grandmother, the Princess Palatine, says of her:  “Madame de Berry does not eat much at dinner.  How, indeed, can she?  She never leaves her room before noon, and spends her mornings in eating all kinds of delicacies.  At two o’clock she sits down to an elaborate dinner, and does not rise from the table until three.  At four she is eating again—­fruit, salad, cheese, etc.  She takes no exercise whatever.  At ten she has a heavy supper, and retires to bed between one and two in the morning.  She likes very strong brandy.”  And in this last sentence we have the true secret of her undoing.  The Royal Princess was, even tat this early age, a confirmed dipsomaniac, with her brandy bottle always by her side; and was seldom sober, from rising to retiring.

To such a woman, a slave to the senses, a husband like the Duc de Berry, unredeemed by a vestige of manliness, could make no appeal.  She wanted “men” to pay her homage; and, like Catherine of Russia, she had them in abundance—­lovers who were only too ready to pay court to a beautiful Princess, who might one day be Queen of France.  For the Dauphin was now dead; his eldest son, the Duc de Bourgogne, had followed him to the grave a few months later.  Prince Philip had renounced his right to the French crown when he accepted that of Spain; and, between her husband and the throne there was now but one frail life, that of the three-year-old Duc d’Anjou, a child so delicate that he might easily not survive his great-grandfather, Louis, whose hand was already relaxing its grasp of the sceptre he had held so long.

On the intrigues with which this Queen in posse beguiled her days, it is perhaps well not to look too closely.  They are unsavoury, as so much of her life was.  Her lovers succeeded one another with quite bewildering rapidity, and with little regard either to rank or good-looks.  One special favourite of our Sultana was La Haye, a Court equerry, whom she made Chamberlain, and who is pictured by Saint-Simon as “tall, bony, with an awkward carriage and an ugly face; conceited, stupid, dull-witted, and only looking at all passable when on horseback.”

So infatuated was the Duchesse with her ill-favoured equerry that nothing less would please her than an elopement to Holland—­a proposal which so scared La Haye that, in his alarm, he went forthwith to the lady’s father and let the cat out of the bag.  “Why on earth does my daughter want to run away to Holland?” the Due exclaimed with a laugh.  “I should have thought she was having quite a good enough time here!” And so would anyone else have thought.

And while his Duchesse was thus dallying with her multitude of lovers and stupefying herself with her brandy bottle, her husband was driven to his wits’ end by her exhibitions of temper, as by her infidelities.  In vain he stormed and threatened to have her shut up in a convent.  All her retort was to laugh in his face and order him out of her apartment.  Violent scenes were everyday incidents.  “The last one,” says Saint-Simon, “was at Rambouillet; and, by a regrettable mishap, the Duchesse received a kick.”