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.”