The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Memoirs of Louis XIV. and the Regency,
Book IV., by Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans

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Title: The Memoirs of Louis XIV. and the Regency, Book IV.

Author: Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans

Release Date: September 29, 2006 [EBook #3858]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DUCHESSE D'ORLEANS ***

Produced by David Widger

MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. AND OF THE REGENCY

Being the Secret Memoirs of the Mother of the Regent,
MADAME ELIZABETH-CHARLOTTE OF BAVARIA, DUCHESSE D'ORLEANS.

BOOK 4.

Victor Amadeus II.
The Grand Duchess, Consort of Cosimo II. of Florence
The Duchesse de Lorraine, Elizabeth-Charlotte d'Orleans
The Duc du Maine
The Duchesse du Maine
Louvois
Louis XV.
Anecdotes and Historical Particulars of Various Persons
Explanatory Notes

SECTION XXXV.--VICTOR AMADEUS, KING OF SICILY.

It is said that the King of Sicily is always in ill humour, and that he
is always quarrelling with his mistresses. He and Madame de Verrue have
quarrelled, they say, for whole days together. I wonder how the good
Queen can love him with such constancy; but she is a most virtuous person
and patience itself. Since the King had no mistresses he lives upon
better terms with her. Devotion has softened his heart and his temper.

Madame de Verrue is, I dare say, forty-eight years of age (1718). I
shared some of the profits of her theft by buying of her 160 medals of
gold, the half of those which she stole from the King of Sicily. She had
also boxes filled with silver medals, but they were all sold in England.

[The Comtesse de Verrue was married at the age of thirteen years.
Victor Amadeus, then King of Sardinia, fell in love with her. She
would have resisted, and wrote to her mother and her husband, who
were both absent. They only joked her about it. She then took that
step which all the world knows. At the age of eighteen, being at a
dinner with a relation of her husband's, she was poisoned. The
person she suspected was the same that was dining with her; he did
not quit her, and