ters and burned them.
This last letter, after all, spoke very truly. I remarked distinctly, in
the looks and manner of the Dauphine, that ridiculous and clumsy
animosity which she had taken a fancy to lavish on me.

As she was not, in my eyes, so sublime a personage that a lady of quality
might not enter into conversation with her, I approached her armchair
with the intention of upsetting her haughtiness and pride by compelling
her to speak to me before everybody.

I complimented her on her coiffure, and even thanked her for the honour
she did me in imitating me; she reddened, and I entreated her not to put
herself about, assuring her that her face looked much better in its
habitual pallor. These words redoubled her dissatisfaction, and her
redness then became a veritable scarlet flame.

Passing forthwith to another subject, I pronounced in a few words a
panegyric on the late Queen; to which I skilfully added that, from the
first day, she had been able to understand the French graces and assume
them with intelligence and taste.

"Her Spanish accent troubled her for a year or two longer," added I;
"strictly speaking, this accent, derived from the Italian, has nothing
disagreeable in it; while the English, Polish, Russian, and German accent
is inharmonious in itself, and is lost with great difficulty here."

Seeing that my reflections irritated her, I stopped short, and made my
excuses by saying to her, "Madame, these are only general reflections.
Your Highness is an exception, and has struck us all, as you have nothing
German left but memories, and, perhaps, regrets."

She answered me, stammering, that she had not been destined in the first
place for the throne of France, and that this want of forethought had
injured her education; then, feeling a spark of courage in her heart, she
said that the late Queen had more than once confided to her that the
Court of France was disorderly in its fashions, because it was never the
princesses who gave it its tone as elsewhere.

Madame de Maintenon perceived quickly the consequences of this saying;
for the peace of the Princess, she retorted quickly: "In France, the
princesses are so kind and obliging as to follow the fashions; but the
good examples and good tone come to us from our princes, and our only
merit is to imitate them with ingenuity."

CHAPTER XXIX.

Judgment Given by the Chatelet.--The Marquis d'Antin Restored to His
Father.--The Judgment is Not Executed.