On the next day the Doge and senators came to present their homage to my children, and did not forget me in their visits of ceremony.

CHAPTER XLV.

The Comte de Vermandois.—­His Entrance into the World.—­Quarrels with the Dauphin.—­Duel.—­Siege of Courtrai.—­The Cathedral of Arras.

When Madame de la Valliere (led by suggestions coming from the Most High) left the Court and the world to shut herself up in a cloister, she committed a great imprudence; I should not know how to repeat it:  The Carmelites in the Rue Saint Jacques could easily do without her; her two poor little children could not.  The King confided them, I am well aware, to governors and governesses who were prudent, attentive, and capable; but all the governors and preceptors in the world will never replace a mother,—­above all, in a place of dissipation, tumult, and carelessness like the Court.

M. le Comte de Vermandois was only seven years old when exaggerated scruples and bad advice deprived him of his mother.  This amiable child, who loved her, at first suffered much from her absence and departure.  He had to be taken to the Carmelites, where the sad metamorphosis of his mother, whom he had seen so brilliant and alluring, made him start back in fright.

He loved her always as much as he was loved by her, and in virtue of the permission formally given by the Pope, he went every week to pass an hour or two with her in the parlour.  He regularly took there his singing and flute lessons; these were two amiable talents in which he excelled.

About his twelfth year he was taken with the measles, and passed through them fairly well.  The smallpox came afterwards, but respected his charming brown face.  A severe shower of rain, which caught him in some forest, made him take rheumatism; the waters of Vichy cured him; he returned beaming with health and grace.

The King loved him tenderly, and everybody at Court shared this predilection of the monarch.  M. de Vermandois, of a stature less than his father, was none the less one of the handsomest cavaliers at the Court.  To all the graces of his amiable mother he joined an ease of manner, a mixture of nobility and modesty, which made him noticeable in the midst of the most handsome and well made.  I loved him with a mother’s fondness, and, from all his ingenuous and gallant caresses, it was easy to see that he made me a sincere return.

This poor Comte de Vermandois, about a year before the death of the Queen, had a great and famous dispute with Monsieur le Dauphin, a jealous prince, which brought him his first troubles, and deprived him suddenly of the protecting favour of the Infanta-queen.