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 does
this woman want with me?" He was in love with a lady of the Queen's
suite, whom I knew very well: she had apartments in the Palais Royal, and
was called Madame de Bregie. As she was very pretty, she excited a good
deal of passion; but she was a very honest lady, who served the Queen
with great fidelity, and was the cause of the Cardinal's living upon
better terms with the Queen than before. She had very good sense.
Monsieur loved her for her fidelity to the Queen his mother. She has
been dead now four-and-twenty years (1717).

The Princesse de Deux Ponts has recently furnished another instance of
the misfortune which usually attends the secret marriages of ladies of
high birth. She married her equerry, was very ill-treated by him, and
led a very miserable life; but she deserved all she met with and I
foresaw it. She was with me at the Opera once, and insisted at all
events that her equerry should sit behind her. "For God's sake," I said
to her, "be quiet, and give yourself no trouble about this Gerstorf; you
do not know the manners of this country; when folks perceive you are so
anxious about that man, they will think you are in love with him." I did
not know then how near this was to the truth. She replied, "Do people,
then, in this country take no care of their servants?"--"Oh, yes,"
I said, "they request some of their friends to carry them to the Opera,
but they do not go with them."

M. Pentenrieder is a perfect gentleman, extremely well-bred, totally
divested of the vile Austria