have it. His Majesty has made this same reflection, groaning,
more than once.

Marie Louise, having been married by proxy, in the great Chapel of Saint
Germain, where the Cardinal de Bouillon blessed the ring in his quality
of Grand Almoner of France, left for that Spain which her young heart
distrusted.

Her beauty and charms rendered her precious to the monarch, utterly
melancholy and devout as he was. He did not delay subjecting her to the
wretched, petty, tiresome, and absurd etiquette of that Gothic Court.
Mademoiselle submitted to all these nothings, seeing she had been able to
submit to separation from France. She condemned herself to the most
fastidious observances and the most sore privations, which did not much
ameliorate her lot.

A young Castilian lord, almost mad himself, thought fit to find this
Queen pretty, and publicly testify his love for her. The jealousy of the
religious King flared up like a funeral torch. He conceived a hatred of
his wife, reserved and innocent though she was. She died cruelly by
poison. And Monseigneur le Dauphin probably cried, after his manner:

"What a great pity! She won't send me the touru!"

CHAPTER XIV.

The Dauphine of Bavaria.--The Confessor with Spurs.--Madame de Maintenon
Disputes with Bossuet.--He Opposes to Her Past Ages and History.--The
Military Absolution.

Eight months after the wedding of Marie Louise, we witnessed the arrival
of Anne Marie Christine, Princess of Bavaria, daughter of the Elector
Ferdinand. The King and Monseigneur went to receive her at
Vitry-le-Francais, and then escorted her to Chalons, where the Queen was
awaiting her.

The Cardinal de Bouillon celebrated the marriage in the cathedral church
of this third-class town. The festivities and jubilations there lasted a
week.

The King had been very willing to charge me with the arrangement of the
baskets of presents destined for the Dauphine; I acquitted myself of this
commission with French taste and a sentiment of what was proper. When
the Queen saw all these magnificent gifts placed and spread out in a
gallery, she cried out, and said:

"Things were not done so nobly for me; and yet, I can say without vanity,
I was of a better house than she."

This remark paints the Queen, Maria Theresa, better than anything which
could be said. Can one wonder, after that, that she should have brought
into the world an hereditary prince who so keenly loves 'touru', and asks
for it!

Mada