Madame la Marechale de Schomberg had a niece, Mademoiselle d’Aumale, whom her parents had placed at St. Cyr during the King’s life.  She was ugly, but possessed great wit, and succeeded in amusing the King so well that the old Maintenon became disturbed at it.  She picked a quarrel with her, and wanted to send her again to the convent.  But the King opposed this, and made the old lady bring her back.  When the King died, Mademoiselle d’Aumale would not stay any longer with Madame de Maintenon.

When the Dauphine first arrived, she did not know a soul.  Her household was formed before she came.  She did not know who Maintenon was; and when Monsieur explained it to her a year or two afterwards, it was too late to resist.  The Dauphin used at first to laugh at the old woman, but as he was amorous of one of the Dauphine’s Maids of Honour, and consequently was acquainted with the gouvernante of the Maids of Honour, Montchevreuil, a creature of Maintenon’s, that old fool set her out in very fair colours.  Madame de Maintenon did not scruple to estrange the Dauphin from the Dauphine, and very piously to sell him first Rambure and afterwards La Force.

18th April, 1719—­To-day I will begin my letter with the story of Madame de Ponikau, in Saxony.  One day during her lying-in, as she was quite alone, a little woman dressed in the ancient French fashion came into the room and begged her to permit a party to celebrate a wedding, promising that they would take care it should be when she was alone.  Madame de Ponikau having consented, one day a company of dwarfs of both sexes entered her chamber.  They brought with them a little table, upon which a good dinner, consisting of a great number of dishes, was placed, and round which all the wedding guests took their seats.  In the midst of the banquet, one of the little waiting-maids ran in, crying,

“Thank Heaven, we have escaped great perplexity.  The old ----- is dead.”

It is the same here, the old is dead.  She quitted this world at St. Cyr, on Saturday last, the 15th day of April, between four and five o’clock in the evening.  The news of the Duc du Maine and his wife being arrested made her faint, and was probably the cause of her death, for from that time she had not a moment’s repose or content.  Her rage, and the annihilation of her hopes of reigning with him, turned her blood.  She fell sick of the measles, and was for twenty days in great fever.  The disorder then took an unfavourable turn, and she died.  She had concealed two years of her age, for she pretended to be only eighty-four, while she was really eighty-six years old.  I believe that what grieved her most in dying was to quit the world, and leave me and my son behind her in good health.  When her approaching death was announced to her, she said, “To die is the least event of my life.”  The sums which her nephew and niece De Noailles inherited from her were immense; but the amount cannot be ascertained, because she had concealed a large part of her wealth.