were
dark, his face long and narrow, his nose large, his mouth small, and his
teeth very bad; he was fond of play, of holding drawing-rooms, of eating,
dancing and dress; in short, of all that women are fond of. The King
loved the chase, music and the theatre; my husband rather affected large
parties and masquerades: his brother was a man of great gallantry, and I
do not believe my husband was ever in love during his life. He danced
well, but in a feminine manner; he could not dance like a man because his
shoes were too high-heeled. Excepting when he was with the army, he
would never get on horseback. The soldiers used to say that he was more
afraid of being sun-burnt and of the blackness of the powder than of the
musket-balls; and it was very true. He was very fond of building.
Before he had the Palais Royal completed, and particularly the grand
apartment, the place was, in my opinion, perfectly horrible, although in
the Queen-mother's time it had been very much admired. He was so fond of
the ringing of bells that he used to go to Paris on All Souls' Day for
the purpose of hearing the bells, which are rung during the whole of the
vigils on that day he liked no other music, and was often laughed at for
it by his friends. He would join in the joke, and confess that a peal of
bells delighted him beyond all expression. He liked Paris better than
any other place, because his secretary was there, and he lived under less
restraint than at Versailles. He wrote so badly that he was often
puzzled to read his own letters, and would bring them to me to decipher
them.

"Here, Madame," he used to say, laughing, "you are accustomed to my
writing; be so good as to read me this, for I really cannot tell what I
have been writing." We have often laughed at it.

He was of a good disposition enough, and if he had not yielded so
entirely to the bad advice of his favourites, he would have been the best
master in the world. I loved him, although he had caused me a great deal
of pain; but during the last three years of his life that was totally
altered. I had brought him to laugh at his own weakness, and even to
take jokes without caring for them. From the period that I had been
calumniated and accused, he would suffer no one again to annoy me; he had
the most perfect confidence in me, and took my part so decidedly, that
his favourites dared not practise against me. But before that I had
suffered terribly. I was just about to be happy, when