My son replied, “You could not believe it, because you knew the contrary.”

She said arrogantly, and yet my son kept his temper, “Is not the Dauphine dead?”

“Is it my fault,” he rejoined, “that she is dead?  Was she immortal?”

“Well,” she replied, “I was so much distressed at the loss that I could not help detesting him whom I was told was the cause of it.”

“But, Madame,” said my son, “you know, from the report which has been made to the King, that I was not the cause, and that the Dauphine was not poisoned.”

“I do know it,” she replied, “and I will say nothing more about it.”

SECTION X.—­THE AFFAIRS OF THE REGENCY.

The old Maintenon wished to have the Duc du Maine made Regent; but my son’s harangue to the Parliament frustrated her intention.

He was very angry with Lord Stair because he believed that he had done him an ill office with the King of England, and prevented the latter from entering into the alliance with France and Holland.  If that alliance had taken place my son could have prevented the Pretender from beginning his journey; but as England refused to do so, the Regent was obliged to do nothing but what was stipulated for by the treaty of peace:  that is to say, not to succour the Pretender with money nor arms, which he faithfully performed.  He sent wherever Lord Stair requested.

[The Duc d’Orleans ordered, in Lord Stair’s presence, Contades, Major of the Guard, to arrest the Pretender on his passage through Chateau-Thierry; but, adds Duclos, Contades was an intelligent man, and well acquainted with the Regent’s secret intentions, and so he set out resolved not to find what he went in search of.]

He believed that the English people would not be well pleased to see their King allied to the Crown of France.

1717

The Baron Goertz thought to entrap my son, who, however, did not trust him; he would not permit him to purchase a single ship, and it was upon this that the Baron had built all his hopes of success.

That tall Goertz, whom I have seen, has an unlucky physiognomy; I do not believe that he will die a fair death.

The Memoir of the thirty noblemen has so much angered my son that he will hasten to pronounce sentence.

[Goertz was the Swedish minister, and had been sent into Holland and France to favour the cause of the Pretender.  He was arrested in Holland in 1717, and remained in prison for several months.  He was a very cunning person, and a great political intriguer.  On the death of Charles XII. he was taken before an extraordinary tribunal, and condemned in an unjust and arbitrary manner to be beheaded, which sentence was executed in, May, 1719.]

1718