whom I have frequent intercourse; I am whole, long days alone in my cabinet, where I busy myself in reading and writing. If any one pays me a visit I see them for only a few moments; I talk of rain and fine weather or the news of the day; and after that I take refuge in my retreat. Four times a week I send off my regular letters: Monday, to Savoie; Wednesday, to Modena; Thursday and Sunday I write very long letters to my aunt in Hanover; from six to eight o’clock I drive out with Monsieur and my ladies; three times a week I go to Paris, and every day I write to my friends who live there; I hunt twice a week; and this is how I pass my time.”

When she speaks of solitude we see it is a Court solitude and much diversified. Still it was remarkable that a woman of so grand a station and a princess should spend so many hours daily alone in her cabinet in company with her desk.

After the death of Monsieur, Madame could live more to her liking. She regretted being obliged to dismiss her maids-of-honour, whose youth and gayety amused her; but she gave herself a compensation after her own heart, by taking to herself, without official title, two friends, the Maréchale de Clérembault and the Comtesse de Beuvron, both widows, whom Monsieur had dismissed with aversion from the Court of the Palais-Royal, but to whom Madame had ever remained faithful in absence. They were the “friends in Paris,” to whom she wrote continually. Becoming free herself, she wanted them near her, and henceforth enjoyed, almost as a simple private person, that united constant friendship in which she trusted.

Hunting was long one of Madame’s greatest pleasures, or rather passions. I have said that while a child at Heidelberg she gave herself up to all manly exercises. Her father, however, forbade her to hunt or to ride on horseback. It was in France, therefore, that she served her apprenticeship, and her impetuosity often made it dangerous. Twenty-six times was she thrown from her horse, without being frightened or discouraged. “Is it possible,” she says, “that you have never seen a great hunt? I have seen more than a thousand stags taken, and I have had bad falls; but out of twenty-six times that I have been thrown from my horse I never hurt myself but once, and then I dislocated my elbow.”

The theatre was another passion, which, in her, was derived from intelligence and her natural taste for things of the understanding. It was the only pleasure (except that of writing letters) which lasted to the end of her life. She was not of the opinion of Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and other great religious oracles of the day in the matter of theatres; she forestalled the opinion of the future and that of the most indulgent moralists. “With regard to the priests who forbid the theatre,” she says, rather irreverently, “I shall say no more, except this, that if they saw a little further than their own noses they would understand that the money people spend on going to the play is not ill-spent; in the first place, the comedians are poor devils who earn their living that way; and next, comedies inspire joy, joy produces health, health gives strength, strength produces good work; therefore comedies should be encouraged, and not forbidden.” She liked to laugh, and the “Malade Imaginaire” diverted her to such a degree that one might think in reading her letters that she was trying to imitate all that is most physical and unfit for women in its style of pleasantry. And yet “the ‘Malade Imaginaire’ is not the one of Molière’s plays that I like best,” she says; “Tartuffe pleases me better.” And in another letter: “I cannot write longer, for I am called to go to the theatre; I am to see the ‘Misanthrope,’ the one of Molière’s plays that gives me the most pleasure.” She admired Corneille and quotes the “Death of Pompey.” I do not know whether she liked “Esther,” but she must surely have loved Shakespeare. “I have often heard his Highness, our father,” she writes to her half-sister, “say that there are no comedies in the world finer than those of the English.”

After the death of Monsieur and during the last years of Louis XIV. she adopted a way of life that was very precise and retired. “I live here quite deserted (May 3, 1709) for everybody, young and old, runs after favour. The Maintenon cannot endure me, and the Duchesse de Bourgogne likes only what that lady likes.” She became at last absolutely a hermit in the midst of the Court. “I consort with no one here, except my own people; I am as polite as I can be to everybody, but I contract no intimate relations with any one, and I live alone; I go to walk, I go to drive, but from two o’clock to half-past nine I never see a human face; I read, I write, or I amuse myself in making baskets like the one I sent my aunt.” Sometimes, however, to enliven this long interval from two o’clock to half-past nine, her ladies would play at hombre or brelan beside her writing-table.

The regency of her son brought the Court again around Madame; and her more frequent residence in Paris allowed her less retreat than she was able to make at Versailles. Sometimes, in the morning, half a dozen duchesses would take up her time and cut short her correspondence. She detested their conversations of mere politeness, in which they talked without having anything to say. “I would rather be alone than have to give myself the trouble of finding something to say to each of them; for the French think it very bad if you do not talk to them, and go away discontented; one must therefore take pains to say something to each; and so I am content and tranquil when they leave me to myself.” She made exception with less annoyance when it was a question of Germans of high rank, who all wished to be presented to her, and whom she greeted very well. At times there were as many as twenty-nine German princes, counts, and gentlemen in her apartment.

One evening she made a scene before all present to the Duchesse de Berry, her grand-daughter, who had appeared before her in a loose gown, or rather in fancy dress, intending to go to the Tuileries in such array. “No, madame,” she said, cutting short all explanation, “nothing excuses you; you might at least dress yourself properly the few times you do go to see the king; I, who am your grandmother, dress myself every day. Say honestly it is laziness that prevents you from doing so; which belongs neither to your age nor to your station. A princess should be dressed as a princess, and a soubrette as a soubrette.” While saying all this and not listening to the reply of the Duchesse de Berry, Madame went on writing her letter in German, her pen never ceasing to scratch the paper. The table on which she wrote was a secretary somewhat raised, so that in her pausing moments she could, without rising from her seat, look down upon the game of the players beside her. “That was her occupation if she ceased to write, but when any one came in and approached her she would leave everything to ask them, ‘What news?’ and as the giving of news made every one welcome, people invented it when there was none to tell. No sooner had she heard it than, without examination, she turned to the letter already begun and wrote down the tale she had just been told.” It is thus that, side by side with things that she sees well and says well, and which are in truth the expression of her own thought, her letters contain much else that is simply malignant gossip and trash.

In the days of Louis XIV. letters were unsealed at the post-office, read, and extracts made and sent to the king, and sometimes to Mme. de Maintenon. Madame knew that, but went her way in spite of it, using her privilege as princess to tell truths without reserve, and even to write insults on those who,