Ye gods! what a wretch!
To speak ill of him is no sin. A mangled likeness of his father,
he had all his faults with not one of his merits. He was perpetually
changing his mistresses, but it cannot be said whether it was
inconstancy on his part, or disgust on theirs, but the latter
appears to me most probable. Though young, he was devoured by
gout or some other infirmity, but it was called gout out of
deference to the house of Richelieu. They talked of the duchess
de ------, whose husband was said to have poisoned her.
The saints of Versailles--the duc de la Vauguyon, the duc d'Estissac,
and M. de Durfort--did like others. These persons practised
religion in the face of the world, and abstained from loose
conversation in presence of their own families; but with the king
they laid aside their religion and reserve, so that these hypocrites
had in the city all the honours of devotion, and in the royal
apartments all the advantages of loose conduct. As for me, I
was at Versailles the same as everywhere else. To please the
king I had only to be myself. I relied, for the future, on my
uniformity of conduct. What charmed him in the evening, would
delight again the next day. He had an equilibrium of pleasure,
a balance of amusement which can hardly be described; it was
every day the same variety; the same journeys, the same fetes,
the balls, the theatres, all came round at fixed periods with the
most monotonous regularity.
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