I sent word to the King that the Marquis refused to assist his generous projects; he answered me: 

“Very well, we must look somewhere else.”

Happily, this domestic humiliation did not transpire at Bourbonne; for M. de la Bruyere had arrived there with Monsieur le Prince, and that model satirist would unfailingly have made merry over it at my expense.

The best society lavished its attentions on me; Coulanges, whose flatteries are so amusing, never left us for a moment.

The Prince, after the States were over, had come to relax himself at Bourbonne, which was his property.  After having done all in his power formerly to dethrone his master, he is his enthusiastic servitor now that he sees him so strong.  He was fascinated with Mademoiselle de Nantes, and asked my permission to seek her hand for the Duc de Bourbon, his grandson; my reply was, that the alliance was desirable on both sides, but that these arrangements were settled only by the King.

In spite of the insolent diatribe of M. de Montespan, the waters proved good and favourable; my blood, little by little, grew calm; my pains, passing from one knee to the other, insensibly faded away in both; and, after having given a brilliant fete to the Prince de Mont-Beliard, the English Chancellor, and our most distinguished bathers, I went back to Versailles, where the work seemed to me to have singularly advanced.

The King went in advance of us to Corbeil; Madame de Maintenon, her pretty nieces, and my children were in the carriage.  The King received me with his ordinary kindness, and yet said no word to me of the harshness which I had suffered from my husband.  Two or three months afterwards he recollected his royal word, and gave me to understand that the Prince de Bourbon was shortly going to give up Navarre, in Normandy, and that this vast and magnificent estate would be raised to a duchy for me.

It has not been yet, at the moment that I write.  Perhaps it is written above that I shall never be a duchess.  In such a case, the King would not deserve the inward reproaches that my sensibility addresses him, since his good-will would be fettered by destiny.

It is my kindness which makes me speak so.

CHAPTER II.

The Venetian Drummer.—­The Little Olivier.—­Adriani’s Love.—­His Ingratitude.—­His Punishment.—­His Vengeance.—­Complaint on This Account.

At the great slaughter of Candia, M. de Vivonne had the pleasure of saving a young Venetian drummer whom he noticed all covered with blood, and senseless, amongst the dead and dying, with whom the field was covered far and wide.  He had his wounds dressed and cared for by the surgeons of the French navy, with the intention of giving him me, either as a valet de chambre or a page, so handsome and agreeable this young Italian was.  Adriani was his name.  He presented him to me after the return of the expedition to France, and I was sensible of this amiable attention of my brother, for truly the peer of this young drummer did not exist.