“Princes,” said he, “have no right to be careless; since universal agreement has made us Highnesses, we must know how to carry our burden, and to lay it down at no time, and in no place.”

Mademoiselle excused herself on the ground of her remoteness from the world, and on the expense, which she wished to keep down.

“From the sight of the country,” said the King, “you must have a hundred to a hundred and twelve, acres here.”

“A hundred and nine,” she answered.

“Have you paid dear for this property?” went on the King.  “It is the President Gonthier who has sold it?”

“I paid for this site, and the old house which no longer exists, forty thousand livres,” she said.

“Forty thousand livres!” cried the King.  “Oh, my cousin, there is no such thing as conscience!  You have not paid for the ground.  I was assured that poor President Gonthier had only got rid of his house at Choisy because his affairs were embarrassed; you must indemnify him, or rather I will indemnify him myself, by giving him a pension.”

Mademoiselle bit her lip and added: 

“The President asked sixty thousand first; my men of business offered him forty, and he accepted it.”

Mademoiselle has no generosity, although she is immensely rich; she pretended not to hear, and it was M. Colbert who sent by order the twenty thousand livres to the President.

Mademoiselle, vain and petty, as though she were a bourgeoise of yesterday, showed us her gallery, where she had already collected the selected portraits of all her ancestors, relations, and kindred; she pointed out to us in her winter salon the portrait of the little Comte de Toulouse, painted, not as an admiral, but as God of the Sea, floating on a pearl shell; and his brother, the Duc du Maine, as Colonel-General of the Swiss and Grisons.  The full-length portrait of the King was visible on three chimneypieces; she was at great pains to make a merit of it, and call for thanks.

Having followed her into her state chamber, where she had stolen in privately, I saw that she was taking away the portrait of Lauzun.  I went and told it to the King, who shrugged his shoulders and fell to laughing.

“She is fifty-two years old,” he said to me.

A very pretty collation of confitures and fruits was served us, to which the King prayed her to add a ragout of peas and a roasted fowl.

During the repast, he said to her:  “For the rest, I have not noticed the portrait of Gaston, your father; is it a distraction on my part, or an omission on yours?”

“It will be put there later,” she answered.  “It is not time.”

“What! your father!” added the King.  “You do not think that, cousin!”

“All my actions,” added the Princess, “are weighed in the balance beforehand; if I were to exhibit the portrait of my father at the head of these various pictures, I should have to put my stepmother, his wife, there too, as a necessary pendant.  The harm which she has done me does not permit of that complacence.  One opens one’s house only to one’s friends.”