I like that Mercy who tricked his master, the Duc de Lorraine.  When he reached Nancy he requested the Duke to recruit three regiments, which he said should be his own.  The Duke did recruit them, fully persuaded they were to be his; but when the companies were filled, Mercy begged the Emperor to give them to him, and he actually obtained them; so that the Duke had not the appointment of a single officer.

The poor Duchess of Mecklenbourg, the wife of Christian Louis, was a very good woman when one was thoroughly acquainted with her.  She told me the whole history of her intrigue with Bernstorff.  She regulated her household very well, and had always two carriages.  She did not affect the splendour of a sovereign; but she kept up her rank better than the other Duchesses, and I liked her the better for this.  The husband, Christian Louis of Mecklenbourg, was a notable fool.  He one day demanded an audience of the King, under the pretence of having something of importance to say to him.  Louis XIV. was then more than forty years old.  When the Duke found himself in the King’s presence, he said to him, “Sire, you seem to me to have grown.”  The King laughed, and said, “Monsieur, I am past the age of growing.”—­“Sire,” rejoined the Duke, “do you know everybody says I am very much like you, and quite as good-looking as you are?”—­“That is very probable,” said the King, still laughing.  The audience was then finished, and the Duke went away.  This fool could never engage his brother-in-law’s favour, for M. de Luxembourg had no regard for him.

When the Queen had the government of the country, all the females of the Court, even to the very servants, became intriguers.  They say it was the most ridiculous thing in the world to see the eagerness with which women meddled with the Queen-mother’s regency.  At the commencement she knew nothing at all.  She made a present to her first femme de chambre of five large farms, upon which the whole Court subsisted.  When she went to the Council to propose the affair, everybody laughed, and she was asked how she proposed to live.  She was quite astonished when the thing was explained to her, for she thought she had only given away five ordinary farms.  This anecdote is very true and was related to me by the old Chancellor Le Tellier, who was present at the Council.  She is said often to have laughed as she confessed her ignorance.  Many other things of a similar nature happened during the regency.

There is a Bishop of a noble family, tolerably young but very ugly, who was at first so devout that he thought of entering La Trappe; he wore his hair combed down straight, and dared not look a woman in the face.  Having learned that in the city where he held his see there was a frail fair one, whose gallantries had become notorious, he felt a great desire to convert her and to make her come to the confessional.  She was, it is said, a very pretty woman, and had, moreover, a great deal of wit.