and yet wait behind their master, as I saw the Duc of Praslin’s do, with a red pocket-handkerchief about their necks.  Versailles, like everything else, is a mixture of parade and poverty, and in every instance exhibits something most dissonant from our manners.  In the colonnades, upon the staircases, nay in the antechambers of the royal family, there are people selling all sorts of wares.  While we were waiting in the Dauphin’s sumptuous bedchamber, till his dressing-room door should be opened, two fellows were sweeping it, and dancing about in sabots to rub the floor.

You perceive that I have been presented.  The Queen took great notice of me; none of the rest said a syllable.  You are let into the King’s bedchamber just as he has put on his shirt; he dresses and talks good-humouredly to a few, glares at strangers, goes to mass, to dinner, and a-hunting.  The good old Queen, who is like Lady Primrose in the face, and Queen Caroline in the immensity of her cap, is at her dressing-table, attended by two or three old ladies, who are languishing to be in Abraham’s bosom, as the only man’s bosom to whom they can hope for admittance.  Thence you go to the Dauphin, for all is done in an hour.  He scarce stays a minute; indeed, poor creature, he is a ghost, and cannot possibly last three months.  The Dauphiness is in her bedchamber, but dressed and standing; looks cross, is not civil, and has the true Westphalian grace and accents.  The four Mesdames, who are clumsy plump old wenches, with a bad likeness to their father, stand in a bedchamber in a row, with black cloaks and knotting-bags, looking good-humoured, not knowing what to say, and wriggling as if they wanted to make water.  This ceremony too is very short; then you are carried to the Dauphin’s three boys, who you may be sure only bow and stare.  The Duke of Berry[1] looks weak and weak-eyed:  the Count de Provence is a fine boy; the Count d’Artois well enough.  The whole concludes with seeing the Dauphin’s little girl dine, who is as round and as fat as a pudding.

[Footnote 1:  The Duc de Berri was afterwards Louis XVI.; the Comte de Provence became Louis XVIII.; and the Comte d’Artois, Charles X.]

In the Queen’s antechamber we foreigners and the foreign ministers were shown the famous beast of the Gevaudan, just arrived, and covered with a cloth, which two chasseurs lifted up.  It is an absolute wolf, but uncommonly large, and the expression of agony and fierceness remains strongly imprinted on its dead jaws.

I dined at the Duc of Praslin’s with four-and-twenty ambassadors and envoys, who never go but on Tuesdays to Court.  He does the honours sadly, and I believe nothing else well, looking important and empty.  The Duc de Choiseul’s face, which is quite the reverse of gravity, does not promise much more.  His wife is gentle, pretty, and very agreeable.  The Duchess of Praslin, jolly, red-faced, looking very vulgar, and being very attentive and civil.  I saw the Duc de Richelieu in waiting, who is pale, except his nose, which is red, much wrinkled, and exactly a remnant of that age which produced General Churchill, Wilks the player, the Duke of Argyll, &c.  Adieu!