had happened of which no intelligence had been sent:  he searched the gazettes of Holland; in one he read of a great action said to have been fought, and in which M. du Maine had been grievously wounded; in the next the news of the action was contradicted, and M. du Maine was declared to have received no wounds at all.  In order to learn what had really taken place, the King sent for Lavienne, a man he was in the habit of consulting when he wanted to learn things no one else dared to tell him.

This Lavienne had been a bath-keeper much in vogue in Paris, and had become bath-keeper to the King at the time of his amours.  He had pleased by his drugs, which had frequently put the King in a state to enjoy himself more, and this road had led Lavienne to become one of the four chief valets de chambre.  He was a very honest man, but coarse, rough, and free-spoken; it was this last quality which made him useful in the manner I have before mentioned.  From Lavienne the King, but not without difficulty, learned the truth:  it threw him into despair.  The other illegitimate children were favourites with him, but it was upon M. du Maine that all his hopes were placed.  They now fell to the ground, and the grief of the King was insupportable:  he felt deeply for that dear son whose troops had become the laughing stock of the army; he felt the railleries that, as the gazettes showed him, foreigners were heaping upon his forces; and his vexation was inconceivable.

This Prince, so equal in his manners, so thoroughly master of his lightest movements, even upon the gravest occasions, succumbed under this event.  On rising from the table at Marly he saw a servant who, while taking away the dessert, helped himself to a biscuit, which he put in his pocket.  On the instant, the King forgets his dignity, and cane in hand runs to this valet (who little suspected what was in store for him), strikes him; abuses him, and breaks the cane upon his body!  The truth is, ’twas only a reed, and snapped easily.  However, the stump in his hand, he walked away like a man quite beside himself, continuing to abuse this valet, and entered Madame de Maintenon’s room, where he remained nearly an hour.  Upon coming out he met Father la Chaise.  “My father,” said the King to him, in a very loud voice, “I have beaten a knave and broken my cane over his shoulders, but I do not think I have offended God.”  Everybody around trembled at this public confession, and the poor priest muttered a semblance of approval between his teeth, to avoid irritating the King more.  The noise that the affair made and the terror it inspired may be imagined; for nobody could divine for some time the cause; and everybody easily understood that that which had appeared could not be the real one.  To finish with this matter, once for all, let us add here the saying of M. d’Elboeuf.  Courtier though he was, the upward flight of the illegitimate children weighed upon his heart.  As the campaign was at its close and the Princes were about to depart, he begged M. du Maine before everybody to say where he expected to serve during the next campaign, because wherever it might be he should like to be there also.