During the summer which followed the death of Louis XIV. there was a review of the King’s household troops, led by M. le Duc d’Orleans, in the plain by the side of the Bois de Boulogne.  Passy, where M. de Lauzun had a pretty house, is on the other side.  Madame de Lauzun was there with company, and I slept there the evening before the review.  Madame de Poitiers, a young widow, and one of our relatives, was there too, and was dying to see the review, like a young person who has seen nothing, but who dares not show herself in public in the first months of her mourning.

How she could be taken was discussed in the company, and it was decided that Madame de Lauzun could conduct her a little way, buried in her carriage.  In the midst of the gaiety of this party, M. de Lauzun arrived from Paris, where he had gone in the morning.  He was told what had just been decided.  As soon as he learnt it he flew into a fury, was no longer master of himself, broke off the engagement, almost foaming at the mouth; said the most disagreeable things to his wife in the strongest, the harshest, the most insulting, and the most foolish terms.  She gently wept; Madame de Poitiers sobbed outright, and all the company felt the utmost embarrassment.  The evening appeared an age, and the saddest refectory repast a gay meal by the side of our supper.  He was wild in the midst of the profoundest silence; scarcely a word was said.  He quitted the table, as usual, at the fruit, and went to bed.  An attempt was made to say something afterwards by way of relief, but Madame de Lauzun politely and wisely stopped the conversation, and brought out cards in order to turn the subject.

The next morning I went to M. de Lauzun, in order to tell him in plain language my opinion of the scene of the previous evening.  I had not the time.  As soon as he saw me enter he extended his arms, and cried that I saw a madman, who did not deserve my visit, but an asylum; passed the strongest eulogies upon his wife (which assuredly she merited), said he was not worthy of her, and that he ought to kiss the ground upon which she walked; overwhelmed himself with blame; then, with tears in his eyes, said he was more worthy of pity than of anger; that he must admit to me all his shame and misery; that he was more than eighty years of age; that he had neither children nor survivors; that he had been captain of the guards; that though he might be so again, he should be incapable of the function; that he unceasingly said this to himself, and that yet with all this he could not console himself for having been so no longer during the many years since he had lost his post; that he had never been able to draw the dagger from his heart; that everything which recalled the memory of the past made him beside himself, and that to hear that his wife was going to take Madame de Poitiers to see a review of the body-guards, in which he now counted for nothing, had turned his head, and had rendered