CHAPTER CXIX

The new chateau of Meudon, completely furnished, had been restored to me since the return of the Court to Versailles, just as I had had it before the Court came to Meudon.  The Duc and Duchesse d’Humieres were with us there, and good company.  One morning towards the end of October, 1723, the Duc d’Humieres wished me to conduct him to Versailles, to thank M. le Duc d’Orleans.

We found the Regent dressing in the vault he used as his wardrobe.  He was upon his chair among his valets, and one or two of his principal officers.  His look terrified me.  I saw a man with hanging head, a purple-red complexion, and a heavy stupid air.  He did not even see me approach.  His people told him.  He slowly turned his head towards me, and asked me with a thick tongue what brought me.  I told him.  I had intended to pass him to come into the room where he dressed himself, so as not to keep the Duc d’Humieres waiting; but I was so astonished that I stood stock still.

I took Simiane, first gentleman of his chamber, into a window, and testified to him my surprise and my fear at the state in which I saw M. le Duc d’Orleans.

Simiane replied that for a long time he had been so in the morning; that to-day there was nothing extraordinary about him, and that I was surprised simply because I did not see him at those hours; that nothing would be seen when he had shaken himself a little in dressing.  There was still, however, much to be seen when he came to dress himself.  The Regent received the thanks of the Duc d’Humieres with an astonished and heavy air; he who always was so gracious and so polite to everybody, and who so well knew how to express himself, scarcely replied to him!  A moment after, M. d’Humieres and I withdrew.  We dined with the Duc de Gesvres, who led him to the King to thank his Majesty.

The condition of M. le Duc d’Orleans made me make many reflections.  For a very long time the Secretaries of State had told me that during the first hours of the morning they could have made him pass anything they wished, or sign what might have been the most hurtful to him.  It was the fruit of his suppers.  Within the last year he himself had more than once told me that Chirac doctored him unceasingly, without effect; because he was so full that he sat down to table every evening without hunger, without any desire to eat, though he took nothing in the morning, and simply a cup of chocolate between one and two o’clock in the day (before everybody), it being then the time to see him in public.  I had not kept dumb with him thereupon, but all my representations were perfectly useless.  I knew moreover, that Chirac had continually told him that the habitual continuance of his suppers would lead him to apoplexy, or dropsy on the chest, because his respiration was interrupted at times; upon which he had cried out against this latter malady, which was a slow, suffocating, annoying preparation for death, saying that he preferred apoplexy, which surprised and which killed at once, without allowing time to think of it!