was by playing on this chord that his ministers knew how to manage him
with so much art, and to make themselves despotic masters, causing him to
believe all they wished, while at the same time they rendered him
inaccessible to explanation, and to those who might have explained.

I have, perhaps, too much expanded an affair which might have been more
compressed. But in addition to the fact that I was mixed up in it, it is
by these little private details, as it seems to me, that the characters
of the Court and King are best made known.

In the early part of the next year, 1704., the King made La Queue, who
was a captain of cavalry, campmaster. This La Queue was seigneur of the
place of which he bore the name, distant six leagues from Versailles, and
as much from Dreux. He had married a girl that the King had had by a
gardener's wife. Bontems, the confidential valet of the King, had
brought about the marriage without declaring the names of the father or
the mother of the girl; but La Queue knew it, and promised himself a
fortune. The girl herself was tall and strongly resembled the King.
Unfortunately for her, she knew the secret of her birth, and much envied
her three sisters--recognised, and so grandly married. She lived on very
good terms with her husband--always, however, in the greatest privacy--
and had several children by him. La Queue himself, although by this
marriage son-in-law of the King, seldom appeared at the Court, and, when
there, was on the same footing as the simplest soldier. Bontems did not
fail from time to time to give him money. The wife of La Queue lived
very melancholily for twenty years in her village, never left it, and
scarcely ever went abroad for fear of betraying herself.

On Wednesday, the 25th of June, Monseigneur le Duc de Bourgogne had a son
born to him. This event caused great joy to the King and the Court.
The town shared their delight, and carried their enthusiasm almost to
madness, by the excess of their demonstration and their fetes. The King
gave a fete at Marly, and made the most magnificent presents to Madame la
Duchesse de Bourgogne when she left her bed. But we soon had reason to
repent of so much joy, for the child died in less than a year--and of so
much money unwisely spent, in fetes when it was wanted for more pressing
purposes. Even while these rejoicings were being celebrated, news
reached us which spread consternation in every family, and cast a gloom
over t