eeper's wife ran to the Count,
crying, "Sir, make haste upstairs, for your page is lying-in." She was
delivered of a girl, and the mother and child were soon afterwards placed
in a convent near Paris. While the Count lived he took great care of
her, but he died in the Morea, and his pretended page did not long
survive him; she displayed great piety in the hour of death. A friend of
the Count's, and a nephew of Madame de Montespan, took care of the child,
and after his death the King gave the little creature a pension. I
believe she is still (1717) in the convent.

The Abbe Perrault founded an annual funeral oration for the Prince de
Conde in the Jesuits' Church, where his heart is deposited. I shall not
upon this occasion call to mind his victories, his courage in war, or his
timidity at Court; these are things well known throughout France.

A gentleman of my acquaintance at Paris heard a learned Abbe, who was in
the confidence of Descartes, say that the philosopher used often to laugh
at his own system, and said, "I have cut them out some work: we shall see
who will be fools enough to undertake it."

That old Beauvais, the Queen-mother's first femme de chambre, was
acquainted with the secret of her marriage, and this obliged the Queen to
put up with whatever the confidante chose to do. From this circumstance
has arisen that custom which gives femmes de chambre so much authority in
our apartments. The Queen-mother, the widow of Louis XIII., not
contented with loving Cardinal Mazarin, went the absurd length of
marrying him. He was not a priest, and therefore was not prevented by
his orders from contracting matrimony. He soon, however, got very tired
of the poor Queen, and treated her dreadfully ill, which is the ordinary
result in such marriages. But it is the vice of the times to contract
clandestine marriages. The Queen-mother of England, the widow of Charles
II., made such an one in marrying her chevalier d'honneur, who behaved
very ill to her; while the poor Queen was in want of food and fuel, he
had a good fire in his apartment, and was giving great dinners. He
called himself Lord Germain, Earl of St. Albans; he never addressed a
kind expression to the Queen. As to the Queen-mother's marriage, all the
circumstances relating to it are now well enough known. The secret
passage by which he went nightly to the Palais Royal may still be seen;
when she used to visit him, he was in the habit of saying, "what