SECTION XX.—­MADEMOISELLE D’ORLEANS, LOUISE-ADELAIDE DE CHARTRES.

Mademoiselle de Chartres, Madame d’Orleans’ second daughter, is well made, and is the handsomest of my granddaughters.  She has a fine skin, a superb complexion, very white teeth, good eyes, and a faultless shape, but she stammers a little; her hands are extremely delicate, the red and white are beautifully and naturally mingled in her skin.  I never saw finer teeth; they are like a row of pearls; and her gums are no less beautiful.  A Prince of Auhalt who is here is very much in love with her; but the good gentleman is ugly enough, so that there is no danger.  She dances well, and sings better; reads music at sight, and understands the accompaniment perfectly; and she sings without any grimace.  She persists in her project of becoming a nun; but I think she would be better in the world, and do all in my power to change her determination:  it seems, however, to be a folly which there is no eradicating.  Her tastes are all masculine; she loves dogs, horses, and riding; all day long she is playing with gunpowder, making fusees and other artificial fireworks.  She has a pair of pistols, which she is incessantly firing; she fears nothing in the world, and likes nothing which women in general like; she cares little about her person, and for this reason I think she will make a good nun.

She does not become a nun through jealousy of her sister, but from the fear of being tormented by her mother and sister, whom she loves very much, and in this she is right.  She and her sister are not fond of their mother’s favourites, and cannot endure to flatter them.  They have no very reverent notions, either, of their mother’s brother, and this is the cause of dissensions.  I never saw my granddaughter in better spirits than on Sunday last; she was with her sister, on horseback, laughing, and apparently in great glee.  At eight o’clock in the evening her mother arrived; we played until supper; I thought we were afterwards going to play again, but Madame d’Orleans begged me to go into the cabinet with her and Mademoiselle d’Orleans; the child there fell on her knees, and begged my permission, and her mother’s, to go to Chelles to perform her devotions.  I said she might do that anywhere, that the place mattered not, but that all depended upon her own heart, and the preparation which she made.  She, however, persisted in her desire to go to Chelles.  I said to her mother: 

“You must decide whether your daughter shall go to Chelles or not.”

She replied, “We cannot hinder her performing her devotions.”