de Saint-Simon, whom many
times I thought I should lose. Nothing was comparable to the attachment
she had for her father, or the tenderness he had for her; nothing more
perfectly alike than their hearts and their dispositions. As for me, I
loved him as a father, and he loved me as a son, with the most entire and
sweetest confidence.

About the same time died the Duchesse de Gesvres, separated from a
husband who had been the scourge of his family, and had dissipated
millions of her fortune. She was a sort of witch, tall and lean, who
walked like an ostrich. She sometimes came to Court, with the odd look
and famished expression to which her husband had brought her. Virtue,
wit, and dignity distinguished her. I remember that one summer the King
took to going very often in the evening to Trianon, and that once for all
he gave permission to all the Court, men and women, to follow him. There
was a grand collation for the Princesses, his daughters, who took their
friends there, and indeed all the women went to it if they pleased. One
day the Duchesse de Gesvres took it into her head to go to Trianon and
partake of this meal; her age, her rarity at Court, her accoutrements,
and her face, provoked the Princesses to make fun of her in whispers with
their fair visitors. She perceived this, and without being embarrassed,
took them up so sharply, that they were silenced, and looked down. But
this was not all: after the collation she began to talk so freely and yet
so humorously about them that they were frightened, and went and made
their excuses, and very frankly asked for quarter. Madame de Gesvres was
good enough to grant them this, but said it was only on condition that
they learned how to behave. Never afterwards did they venture to look at
her impertinently. Nothing was ever so magnificent as these soirees of
Trianon. All the flowers of the parterres were renewed every day; and I
have seen the King and all the Court obliged to go away because of the
tuberoses, the odour of which perfumed the air, but so powerfully, on
account of their quantity, that nobody could remain in the garden,
although very vast, and stretching like a terrace all along the canal.

CHAPTER XXVI

The Prince d'Harcourt at last obtained permission to wait on the King,
after having never appeared at Court for seventeen years. He had
followed the King in all his conquests in the Low Countries and Franche-
Comte; but he had remained little at the Cour