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to ridicule me, or to give me any trouble, I set them to rights without hesitation and as they deserved. Finding that Madame la Marechale de Clerambault was attached to me, they removed her, and they placed my daughter under the care of Madame la Marechale de Grancey, the creature of my, bitterest enemy, the Chevalier de Lorraine, whose mistress was the elder sister of this very, Grancei. It may be imagined how fit an example such a woman was for my daughter; but all my prayers, all my, remonstrances, were in vain. Madame de Montespan said to me one day that it was a shame I had no ambition, and would not take part in anything. I replied, "If a person should have intrigued assiduously to become Madame, could not her son permit her to enjoy that rank peaceably? Well, then, fancy that I have become so by such means, and leave me to repose." "You are obstinate," said she. "No, Madame," I answered; "but I love quiet, and I look upon all your ambition to be pure vanity." I thought she would have burst with spite, so angry was she. She, however, continued,-- "But make the attempt and we will assist you." "No," I replied, "Madame, when I think that you, who have a hundred times more wit than I, have not been able to maintain your consequence in that Court which you love so much, what hope can I, a poor foreigner, have of succeeding, who know nothing of intrigue, and like it as little?" She was quite mortified. "Go along," she said, "you are good for nothing." Old Maintenon and her party had instilled into the Dauphine a deep hatred against me; by their direction she often said very impertinent things to me. They hoped that I should resent them to the Dauphine in such manner as to afford her reason to complain to the King of me, and thus draw his displeasure upon me. But as I knew the tricks of the old woman and her coterie, I resolved not to give them that satisfaction; I only laughed at the disobliging manner in which they treated me, and I gave them to understand that I thought the ill behaviour of the Dauphine was but a trick of her childhood, which she would correct as she grew older. When I spoke to her she made me no reply, and laughed at me with the ladies attendant upon her. "Ladies," she once said to them, "amuse me; I am tired;" and at the same time looked at me disdainfully. I only smiled at her, as if her behaviour had no effect upon me. I said, however, to old Maintenon, in a careless ton
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