He soon, however, got very tired of the poor Queen, and treated her dreadfully ill, which is the ordinary result in such marriages.  But it is the vice of the times to contract clandestine marriages.  The Queen-mother of England, the widow of Charles II., made such an one in marrying her chevalier d’honneur, who behaved very ill to her; while the poor Queen was in want of food and fuel, he had a good fire in his apartment, and was giving great dinners.  He called himself Lord Germain, Earl of St. Albans; he never addressed a kind expression to the Queen.  As to the Queen-mother’s marriage, all the circumstances relating to it are now well enough known.  The secret passage by which he went nightly to the Palais Royal may still be seen; when she used to visit him, he was in the habit of saying, “what does this woman want with me?” He was in love with a lady of the Queen’s suite, whom I knew very well:  she had apartments in the Palais Royal, and was called Madame de Bregie.  As she was very pretty, she excited a good deal of passion; but she was a very honest lady, who served the Queen with great fidelity, and was the cause of the Cardinal’s living upon better terms with the Queen than before.  She had very good sense.  Monsieur loved her for her fidelity to the Queen his mother.  She has been dead now four-and-twenty years (1717).

The Princesse de Deux Ponts has recently furnished another instance of the misfortune which usually attends the secret marriages of ladies of high birth.  She married her equerry, was very ill-treated by him, and led a very miserable life; but she deserved all she met with and I foresaw it.  She was with me at the Opera once, and insisted at all events that her equerry should sit behind her.  “For God’s sake,” I said to her, “be quiet, and give yourself no trouble about this Gerstorf; you do not know the manners of this country; when folks perceive you are so anxious about that man, they will think you are in love with him.”  I did not know then how near this was to the truth.  She replied, “Do people, then, in this country take no care of their servants?”—­“Oh, yes,” I said, “they request some of their friends to carry them to the Opera, but they do not go with them.”

M. Pentenrieder is a perfect gentleman, extremely well-bred, totally divested of the vile Austrian manners, and speaks good German instead of the jargon of Austria.  While he was staying here, the Fair of Saint-Germain commenced; a giant, who came to Paris for the purpose of exhibiting himself, having accidentally met M. Pentenrieder, said as soon as he saw him, “It’s all over with me:  I shall not go into the fair; for who will give money to see me while this man shows himself for nothing?” and he really went away.  M. Pentenrieder pleased everybody.  Count Zinzendorf, who succeeded him, did not resemble him at all, but was a perfect Austrian in his manners and his language.