The ladies of chancellors here have the privilege of the tabouret when they come to the toilette; but in the afternoon they are obliged to stand.  This practice began in the days of Marie de Medicis, when a chancellor’s wife happened to be in great favour.  As she had a lame foot and could not stand up, the Queen, who would have her come to visit her every morning, allowed her to sit down.  From this time the custom of these ladies sitting in the morning has been continued.

In the reign of Henri IV. the King’s illegitimate children took precedence of the Princes of the House of Lorraine.  On the day after the King’s death, the Duc de Verneuil was about to go before the Duc de Guise, when the latter, taking him by the arm, said, “That might have been yesterday, but to-day matters are altered.”

Two young Duchesses, not being able to see their lovers, invented the following stratagem to accomplish their wishes.  These two sisters had been educated in a convent some leagues distant from Paris.  A nun of their acquaintance happening to die there, they pretended to be much afflicted at it, and requested permission to perform the last duties to her, and to be present at her funeral.  They were believed to be sincere, and the permission they asked was readily granted them.  In the funeral procession it was perceived that, besides the two ladies, there were two other persons whom no one knew.  Upon being asked who they were, they replied they were poor priests in need of protection; and that, having learnt two Duchesses were to be present at the funeral, they had come to the convent for the purpose of imploring their good offices.  When they were presented to them, the young ladies said they would interrogate them after the service in their chambers.  The young priests waited upon them at the time appointed, and stayed there until the evening.  The Abbess, who began to think their audience was too long, sent to beg the priests would retire.  One of them seemed very melancholy, but the other laughed as if he would burst his sides.  This was the Duc de Richelieu; the other was the Chevalier de Guemene, the younger son of the Duke of that name.  The gentlemen themselves divulged the adventure.

The King’s illegitimate children, fearing that they should be treated in the same way as the Princes of the blood, have for some months past been engaged in drawing a strong party of the nobility to their side, and have presented a very unjust petition against the Dukes and Peers.  My son has refused to receive this petition, and has interdicted them from holding assemblies, the object of which he knows would tend to revolt.  They have, nevertheless, continued them at the instigations of the Duc du Maine and his wife, and have even carried their insolence so far as to address a memorial to my son and another to the Parliament, in which they assert that it is within the province of the nobility alone to decide between