Our King, who read in the future, was thinking of marrying these two princesses conformably with our interests, when the Prince of Orange crossed the sea, and went formally to ask the hand of the elder of his uncle.

Informed of this proceeding, the King at once sent M. de Croissy-Colbert to the Duke of York, to induce him to interfere and refuse his daughter; but, in royal families, it is always the head who makes and decides marriages.  William of Orange obtained his charming cousin Mary, and acquired that day the expectation of the Protestant throne, which was his ambition.

At the news of this marriage, the allies, that is to say, all the King’s enemies, had an outburst of satisfaction, and gave themselves up to puerile jubilations.  The King of Great Britain stood definitely on their side; he made common cause with them, and soon there appeared in the political world an audacious document signed by this prince, in which, from the retreat of his island, the empire of fogs, he dared to demand peace from Louis of Bourbon, his ancient ally and his cousin german, imposing on him the most revolting conditions.

According to the English monarch, France ought to restore to the Spaniards, first Sicily, and, further, the towns of Charleroi, Ath, Courtrai, Condo, Saint Guilain, Tournai, and Valenciennes, as a condition of retaining Franche-Comte; moreover, France was compelled to give up Lorraine to the Duke Charles, and places in German Alsace to the Emperor.

The King replied that “too much was too much.”  He referred the decision of his difficulties to the fortune of war, and collected fresh soldiers.

Then, without further delay, England and the States General signed a particular treaty at La Hague, to constrain France (or, rather, her ruler) to accept the propositions that his pride refused to hear.

CHAPTER V.

The Great Mademoiselle Buys Choisy.—­The President Gonthier.—­The Indemnity.—­The Salmon.—­The Harangue as It Is Not Done in the Academy.

The King had only caused against his own desire the extreme grief which Mademoiselle felt at the imprisonment of Lauzun.  His Majesty was sensible of the wisdom of the resolution which she had made not to break with the Court, and to show herself at Saint Germain, or at Versailles, from time to time, as her rank, her near kinship, her birth demanded.  He said to me one day:  “My cousin is beginning to look up.  I see with pleasure that her complexion is clearing, that she laughs willingly at this and that, and that her good-will for me is restored.  I am told that she is occupied in building a country-house above Vitry.  Let us go to-day and surprise her, and see what this house of Choisy is like.”

We arrived at a sufficiently early hour, and had time to see everything.  The King found the situation most agreeable; those lovely gardens united high up above the Seine, those woods full of broad walks, of light and air, those points of view happily chosen and arranged, gave a charming effect; the house of one story, raised on steps of sixteen stairs, appeared to us elegant from its novelty; but the King blamed his cousin for not having put a little architecture and ornament on the facade.