“I admit, Sire,” I answered him, “that I am not the person required for affairs of that sort.  Your cousin is proud and cutting; I would not endure what she has made others endure.  I cannot accept such a commission.  But Madame de Maintenon, who is gentleness itself, is suitable—­no one more so for this mission; she is at once insinuating and respectful; she is attached to the Duc du Maine.  The interests of my son could not be in better hands.”

The King agreed with me, and both he and I begged the Marquise to conduct M. du Maine to Choisy.

Mademoiselle de Montpensier received him with rapture.  He thanked her for what she had done for him, in granting him her colours, and upon that Mademoiselle asked his permission to embrace him, and to tell him how amiable and worthy of belonging to the King she found him.  She led him to the hall, in which he was to be seen represented as a colonel-general of Swiss.

“I have always loved the Swiss,” she said, “because of their great bravery, their fidelity, and their excellent discipline.  The Marechal de Bassompierre made his corps the perfection which it is; it is for you, my cousin, to maintain it.”

She passed into another apartment, where she was to be seen represented as Bellona.  Two Loves were presenting her, one with his helm adorned with martial plumes, the other with his buckler of gold, with the Orleans-Montpensier arms.  The laurel crown, with which Triumphs were ornamenting her head, and the scaled cuirass of Pallas completed her decoration.  M. le Duc du Maine praised, without affectation, the intelligence of the artist; and as for the figure and the likeness, he said to the Princess:  “You are good, but you are better.”  The calm and the naivety of this compliment made Mademoiselle shed tears.  Her emotion was visible; she embraced my son anew.

“You have brought him up perfectly,” she said to Madame de Maintenon.  “His urbanity is of good origin; that is how a king’s son ought to act and speak: 

“His Majesty,” said Madame de Maintenon, “has been enchanted with your country-house; he spoke of it all the evening.  He even added that you had ordered it all yourself, without an architect, and that M. le Notre would not have done better.”

“M. le Notre,” replied the Princess, “came here for a little; he wanted to cut and destroy, and upset and disarrange, as with the King at Versailles.  But I am of a different mould to my cousin; I am not to be surprised with big words.  I saw that Le Notre thought only of expenditure and tyranny; I thanked him for his good intentions, and prayed him not to put himself out for me.  I found there thickets already made, of an indescribable charm; he wanted, on the instant, to clear them away, so that one could testify that all this new park was his.  If you please, madame, tell his Majesty that M. le Notre is the sworn enemy of Nature; that he sees only the pleasures of proprietorship in the future, and promises us cover and shade just at that epoch of our life when we shall only ask for sunshine in which to warm ourselves.”