he was poisoned, as well as his
physician who committed the crime, and who said when he was dying, "I die
by poison, but I deserve it, for having poisoned my master, M. de
Louvois; and I did this in the hope of becoming the King's physician, as
Madame de Maintenon had promised me." I ought to add that some persons
pretend to think this story of Doctor Seron is a mere invention. Old
Piety (Maintenon) did not commit this crime without an object; but if she
really did poison Louvois, it was because he had opposed her designs and
endeavoured to undeceive the King. Louvois, the better to gain his
object, had advised the King not to take her with him to the army. The
King was weak enough to repeat this to her, and this it was that excited
her against Louvois. That the latter was a very bad man, who feared
neither heaven nor hell, no man can deny; but it must be confessed that
he served his King faithfully.

The Duke de Noailles' grandfather was one of the ugliest men in the
world. He had one glass eye, and his nose was like an owl's, his mouth
large, his teeth ugly and decayed, his face and head very small, his body
long and bent, and he was bitter and ill-tempered. His name was Gluinel.
Madame de Cornuel one day was reading his grandson's genealogy, and, when
she came to his name, exclaimed, "I always suspected, when I saw the Duc
de Noailles, that he came out of the Book of the Lamentations of
Jeremiah!"

When James II. took refuge in France from England, Madame de Cornuel went
to Saint-Germain to see him. Some time afterwards, she was told of the
pains our King was taking to procure his restoration to the throne.
Madame de Cornuel shook her head, and said, "I have seen this King James;
our monarch's efforts are all in vain; he is good for nothing but to make
poor man's sauce. (La sauce au pauvre homme.)"

She went to Versailles to see the Court when M. de Torcy and M. de
Seignelay, both very young, had just been appointed Ministers. She saw
them, as well as Madame de Maintenon, who had then grown old. When she
returned to Paris, some one asked her what remarkable things she had
seen. "I have seen," she said, "what I never expected to see there; I
have seen love in its tomb and the Ministry in its cradle."

The elder Margrave of Anspach was smitten with Mademoiselle d'Armagnac,
but he would not marry her, and said afterwards that he had never
intended to do so, because the familiarities which had passed betwe