ghter of Madame de Thianges,
Madame de Montespan's sister, and therefore a cousin of Madame d'Orleans,
who hates her sister and her nephew worse than the Devil.

I could forgive her all if she were not so treacherous. She flatters me
when I am present, but behind my back she does all in her power to set
the Duchesse de Berri against me; she tells her not to believe that I
love her, but that I wish to have her sister with me. Madame d'Orleans
believes that her daughter, Madame de Berri, loves her less than her
father. It is true that the daughter has not a very warm attachment to
her mother, but she does her duty to her; and yet the more they are full
of mutual civilities the more they quarrel. On the 4th of October, 1718,
Madame de Berri having invited her father to go and sleep at La Muette,
to see the vintage feast and dance which were to be held on the next day.
Madame d'Orleans wrote to Madame de Berri, and asked her if she thought
it consistent with the piety of the Carmelites that she should ask her
father to sleep in her house. Madame de Berri replied that it had never
been thought otherwise than pious that a parent should sleep in his
daughter's house. The mother did this only to annoy her husband and
daughter, and when she chooses she has a very cutting way. It may be
imagined how this letter was received by the father and daughter. I
arrived at La Muette just as it had come. My son dare not complain to
me, for as often as he does, I say to him, "George Dandin, you would have
it so:"--[Moliere]--he therefore only laughed and said nothing. I did
not wish to add to the bitterness which this had occasioned, for that
would have been to blow a fire already too hot; I confined myself,
therefore, to observing that when she wrote it she probably had the
spleen.

She is not very fond of her children, and, as I think, she carries her
indifference too far; for the children see she does not love them, and
this makes them fond of being with me. This angers the mother, and she
reproaches them for it, which only makes them like her less.

Although she loves her son, she does not in general care so much for her
children as for her brothers, and all who belong to the House of
Mortemart.

I was the unintentional cause of making a quarrel between her and the nun
of Chelles. At the commencement of the affair of the Duc du Maine, I
received a letter from my daughter addressed to Madame d'Orleans; and not
thinking th