that I have seldom been at a loss for something to laugh at.  I am naturally somewhat melancholy; when anything happens to afflict me, my left side swells up as if it were filled with water.  I am not good at lying in bed; as soon as I awake I must get up.  I seldom breakfast, and then only on bread and butter.  I take neither chocolate, nor coffee, nor tea, not being able to endure those foreign drugs.  I am German in all my habits, and like nothing in eating or drinking which is not conformable to our old customs.  I eat no soup but such as I can take with milk, wine, or beer.  I cannot bear broth; whenever I eat anything of which it forms a part, I fall sick instantly, my body swells, and I am tormented with colics.  When I take broth alone, I am compelled to vomit, even to blood, and nothing can restore the tone to my stomach but ham and sausages.

I never had anything like French manners, and I never could assume them, because I always considered it an honour to be born a German, and always cherished the maxims of my own country, which are seldom in favor here.  In my youth I loved swords and guns much better than toys.  I wished to be a boy, and this desire nearly cost me my life; for, having heard that Marie Germain had become a boy by dint of jumping, I took such terrible jumps that it is a miracle I did not, on a hundred occasions, break my neck.  I was very gay in my youth, for which reason I was called, in German, Rauschenplatten-gnecht.  The Dauphins of Bavaria used to say, “My poor dear mamma” (so she used always to address me), “where do you pick up all the funny things you know?”

I remember the birth of the King of England

     [George Louis, Duke of Brunswick Hanover, born the 28th of May,
     1660; proclaimed King of England the 12th of August, 1714, by the
     title of George I.]

as well as if it were only yesterday (1720).  I was curious and mischievous.  They had put a doll in a rosemary bush for the purpose of making me believe it was the child of which my aunt

[Sophia of Bavaria, married, in 1658, to the Elector of Hanover, was the paternal aunt of Madame.  She was the granddaughter of James I, and was thus declared the first in succession to the crown of England, by Act of Parliament, 23rd March, 1707.]

had just lain in; at the same moment I heard the cries of the Electress, who was then in the pains of childbirth.  This did not agree with the story which I had been told of the baby in the rosemary bush; I pretended, however, to believe it, but crept to my aunt’s chamber as if I was playing at hide-and-seek with little Bulau and Haxthausen, and concealed myself behind a screen which was placed before the door and near the chimney.  When the newly born infant was brought to the fire I issued from my hiding-place.  I deserved to be flogged, but in honour of the happy event I got quit for a scolding.