He would never content himself with one mistress.  He needed a variety in order to stimulate his taste.  I had no more intercourse with them than with his roues.  He never spoke of them to me, nor I to him.  I scarcely ever knew anything of their adventures.  His roues and valets were always eager to present fresh mistresses to him, from which he generally selected one.  Amongst these was Madame de Sabran, who had married a man of high rank, but without wealth or merit, in order to be at liberty.  There never was a woman so beautiful as she, or of a beauty more regular, more agreeable, more touching, or of a grander or nobler bearing, and yet without affectation.  Her air and her manners were simple and natural, making you think she was ignorant of her beauty and of her figure (this last the finest in the world), and when it pleased her she was deceitfully modest.  With much intellect she was insinuating, merry, overflowing, dissipated, not bad-hearted, charming, especially at table.  In a word, she was all M. le Duc d’Orleans wanted, and soon became his mistress without prejudice to the rest.

As neither she nor her husband had a rap, they were ready for anything, and yet they did not make a large fortune.  One of the chamberlains of the Regent, with an annual salary of six thousand livres, having received another appointment, Madame de Sabran thought six thousand livres a year too good to be lost, and asked for the post for her husband.  She cared so little for him, by the way, that she called him her “mastiff.”  It was she, who, supping with M. le Duc d’Orleans and his roues, wittily said, that princes and lackeys had been made of one material, separated by Providence at the creation from that out of which all other men had been made.

All the Regent’s mistresses had one by one their turn.  Fortunately they had little power, were not initiated into any state secrets, and received but little money.

The Regent amused himself with them, and treated them in other respects exactly as they deserved to be treated.

CHAPTER XC

It is time now that I should speak of matters of very great importance, which led to changes that filled my heart with excessive joy, such as it had never known before.

For a long time past the Parliament had made many encroachments upon the privileges belonging to the Dukes.  Even under the late King it had begun these impudent enterprises, and no word was said against it; for nothing gave the King greater pleasure than to mix all ranks together in a caldron of confusion.  He hated and feared the nobility, was jealous of their power, which in former reigns had often so successfully balanced that of the crown; he was glad therefore of any opportunity which presented itself that enabled him to see our order weakened and robbed of its dignity.