The courier I expected so impatiently arrived the next day, Sunday, after dinner.  The small-pox had declared itself, I learnt, and was going on as well as could be wished.  I believed Monseigneur saved, and wished to remain at my own house; nevertheless I took advice, as I have done all my life, and with great regret set out the next morning.  At La queue, about six leagues from Versailles, I met a financier of the name of La Fontaine, whom I knew well.  He was coming from Paris and Versailles, and came up to me as I changed horses.  Monseigneur, he said, was going on admirably; and he added details which convinced me he was out of all danger.  I arrived at Versailles, full of this opinion, which was confirmed by Madame de Saint-Simon and everybody I met, so that nobody any longer feared, except on account of the treacherous nature of this disease in a very fat man of fifty.

The King held his Council, and worked in the evening with his ministers as usual.  He saw Monseigneur morning and evening, oftentimes in the afternoon, and always remained long by the bedside.  On the Monday I arrived he had dined early, and had driven to Marly, where the Duchesse de Bourgogne joined him.  He saw in passing on the outskirts of the garden of Versailles his grandchildren, who had come out to meet him, but he would not let them come near, and said, “good day” from a distance.  The Duchesse de Bourgogne had had the small-pox, but no trace was left.

The King only liked his own houses, and could not bear to be anywhere else.  This was why his visits to Meudon were few and short, and only made from complaisance.  Madame de Maintenon was still more out of her element there.  Although her chamber was everywhere a sanctuary, where only ladies entitled to the most extreme familiarity entered, she always wanted another retreat near at hand entirely inaccessible except to the Duchesse de Bourgogne alone, and that only for a few instants at a time.  Thus she had Saint-Cyr for Versailles and for Marly; and at Marly also a particular retiring place; at Fontainebleau she had her town house.  Seeing therefore that Monseigneur was getting on well, and that a long sojourn it Meudon would be necessary, the upholsterers of the King were ordered to furnish a house in the park which once belonged to the Chancellor le Tellier, but which Monseigneur had bought.

When I arrived at Versailles, I wrote to M. de Beauvilliers at Meudon praying him to apprise the King that I had returned on account of the illness of Monseigneur, and that I would have gone to see him, but that, never having had the small-pox, I was included in the prohibition.  M. de Beauvilliers did as I asked, and sent word back to me that my return had been very well timed, and that the King still forbade me as well as Madame de Saint-Simon to go to Meudon.  This fresh prohibition did not distress me in the least.  I was informed of all that was passing there; and that satisfied me.