When he became the real master of the State he was just as incompetent as before.  All his application was directed towards his master, and it had for sole aim that that master should not escape him.  He wearied himself in watching all the movements of the prince, what he did, whom he saw, and for how long; his humour, his visage, his remarks at the issue of every audience and of every party; who took part in them, what was said and by whom, combining all these things; above all, he strove to frighten everybody from approaching the Regent, and kept no bounds with any one who had the temerity to do so without his knowledge and permission.  This watching occupied all his days, and by it he regulated all his movements.  This application, and the orders he was obliged to give for appearance sake, occupied all his time, so that he became inaccessible except for a few public audiences, or for others to the foreign ministers.  Yet the majority of those ministers never could catch him, and were obliged to lie in wait for him upon staircases or in passages, where he did not expect to meet them.  Once he threw into the fire a prodigious quantity of unopened letters, and then congratulated himself upon having got rid of all his business at once.  At his death thousands of letters were found unopened.

Thus everything was in arrear, and nobody, not even the foreign ministers, dared to complain to M. le Duc d’Orleans, who, entirely abandoned to his pleasures, and always on the road from Versailles to Paris, never thought of business, only too satisfied to find himself so free, and attending to nothing except the few trifles he submitted to the King under the pretence of working with his Majesty.  Thus, nothing could be settled, and all was in chaos.  To govern in this manner there is no need for capacity.  Two words to each minister charged with a department, and some care in garnishing the councils attended by the King, with the least important despatches (settling the others with M. le Duc d’Orleans) constituted all the labour of the prime minister; and spying, scheming, parade, flatteries, defence, occupied all his time.  His fits of passion, full of insults and blackguardism, from which neither man nor woman, no matter of what rank, was sheltered, relieved him from an infinite number of audiences, because people preferred going to subalterns, or neglecting their business altogether, to exposing themselves to this fury and these affronts.

The mad freaks of Dubois, especially when he had become master, and thrown off all restraint, would fill a volume.  I will relate only one or two as samples.  His frenzy was such that he would sometimes run all round the chamber, upon the tables and chairs, without touching the floor!  M. le Duc d’Orleans told me that he had often witnessed this.

Another sample: