but it was that really his
bounty always anticipated my expectations, and even my wishes; and he
gave me money so fast that he rather poured it in upon me than left me
room to ask it; so that, before I could spend fifty pistoles, I had
always a hundred to make it up.

After I had been near a year and a half in his arms as above, or
thereabouts, I proved with child. I did not take any notice of it to him
till I was satisfied that I was not deceived; when one morning early,
when we were in bed together, I said to him, "My lord, I doubt your
Highness never gives yourself leave to think what the case should be if
I should have the honour to be with child by you." "Why, my dear," says
he, "we are able to keep it if such a thing should happen; I hope you
are not concerned about that." "No, my lord," said I; "I should think
myself very happy if I could bring your Highness a son; I should hope to
see him a lieutenant-general of the king's armies by the interest of his
father, and by his own merit." "Assure yourself, child," says he, "if
it should be so, I will not refuse owning him for my son, though it be,
as they call it, a natural son; and shall never slight or neglect him,
for the sake of his mother." Then he began to importune me to know if it
was so, but I positively denied it so long, till at last I was able to
give him the satisfaction of knowing it himself by the motion of the
child within me.

He professed himself overjoyed at the discovery, but told me that now it
was absolutely necessary for me to quit the confinement which, he said,
I had suffered for his sake, and to take a house somewhere in the
country, in order for health as well as for privacy, against my
lying-in. This was quite out of my way; but the prince, who was a man of
pleasure, had, it seems, several retreats of this kind, which he had
made use of, I suppose, upon like occasions. And so, leaving it, as it
were, to his gentleman, he provided a very convenient house, about four
miles south of Paris, at the village of ----, where I had very agreeable
lodgings, good gardens, and all things very easy to my content. But one
thing did not please me at all, viz., that an old woman was provided,
and put into the house to furnish everything necessary to my lying-in,
and to assist at my travail.

I did not like this old woman at all; she looked so like a spy upon me,
or (as sometimes I was frighted to imagine) like one set privately to
despatch me out of the