She was ugly, but her extreme politeness made her very agreeable. She loved the Dauphin more like a son than a husband. Although he loved her very well, he wished to live with her in an unceremonious manner, and she agreed to it to please him. I used often to laugh at her superstitious devotion, and undeceived her upon many of her strange opinions. She spoke Italian very well, but her German was that of the peasants of the country. At first, when she and Bessola were talking together, I could not understand a word.
She always manifested the greatest friendship and confidence in me to the end of her days. She was not haughty, but as it had become the custom to blame everything she did, she was somewhat disdainful. She had a favourite called Bessola--a false creature, who had sold her to Maintenon. But for the infatuated liking she had for this woman, the Dauphine would have been much happier. Through her, however, she was made one of the most wretched women in the world.
This Bessola could not bear that the Dauphine should speak to any person but herself: she was mercenary and jealous, and feared that the friendship of the Dauphine for any one else would discredit her with Maintenon, and that her mistress's liberality to others would diminish that which she hoped to experience herself. I told this person the truth once, as she deserved to be told, in the presence of the Dauphine; from which period she has neither done nor said anything troublesome to me. I told the Dauphine in plain German that it was a shame that she should submit to be governed by Bessola to such a degree that she could not speak to whom she chose. I said this was not friendship, but a slavery, which was the derision of the Court.
Instead of being vexed at this, she laughed, and said, "Has not everybody some weakness? Bessola is mine."
This wench often put me in an ill-humour: at last I lost all patience, and could no longer restrain myself. I would often have told her what I thought, but that I saw it would really distress the poor Dauphine: I therefore restrained myself, and said to her, "Out of complaisance to you, I will be silent; but give such orders that Bessola may not again rouse me, otherwise I cannot promise but that I may say something she will not like."
The Dauphine thanked me affectionately, and thus more than ever engaged my silence.
When the Dauphine arrived from Bavaria, the fine Court of France was on the decline: it was at the commencement of Maintenon's reign, which spoilt and degraded everything. It was not, therefore, surprising that the poor Dauphine should regret her own country. Maintenon annoyed her immediately after her marriage in such a manner as must have excited pity. The Dauphine had made her own marriage; she had hoped to be uncontrolled, and to become her own mistress; but she was placed in that Maintenon's hands, who wanted to govern her like a child of seven years old, although she was nineteen. That old Maintenon, piqued at the Dauphine for wishing to hold a Court, as she should have done, turned the King against her. Bessola finished this work by betraying and selling her; and thus was the Dauphine's misery accomplished! By selecting me for her friend, she filled up the cup of Maintenon's hatred, who was paying Bessola; because she knew she was jealous of me, and that I had advised the Dauphine not to keep her, for I was quite aware that she had secret interviews with Maintenon.
That lady had also another creature in the Dauphine's household: this was Madame de Montchevreuil, the gouvernante of the Dauphine's filles d'honneur. Madame de Maintenon had engaged her to place the Dauphin upon good terms with the filles d'honneur, and she finished by estranging him altogether from his wife. During her pregnancy, which, as well as her lying-in, was extremely painful, the Dauphine could not go out; and this Montchevreuil took advantage of the opportunity thus afforded her to introduce the filles d'honneur to the Dauphin to hunt and game with him. He became fond, in his way, of the sister of La Force, who was afterwards compelled to marry young Du Roure. The attachment continued, notwithstanding this marriage; and she procured the Dauphin's written promise to marry her in case of the death of the Dauphine and her husband. I do not know how the late King became acquainted with this fact; but it is certain that he was seriously angered at it, and that he banished Du Roure to Gascony, his native country. The Dauphin had an affair of gallantry with another of his wife's filles d'honneur called Rambures. He did not affect any dissimulation with his wife; a great uproar ensued; and that wicked Bessola, following the directions of old Maintenon, who planned everything, detached the Dauphin from his wife more and more. The latter was not very fond of him; but what displeased her in his amours was that they exposed her to be openly and constantly ridiculed and insulted. Montchevreuil made her pay attention to all that passed, and Bessola kept up her anger against her husband.
Maintenon had caused it to be reported among the people by her agents that the Dauphine hated France, and that she urged the imposition of new taxes.
The Dauphine was so ill-treated in her accouchement of the Duc de Berri that she became quite deformed, although previous to this her figure had been remarkably good. On the evening before she died, as the little Duke was sitting on her bed, she said to him, "My dear Berri, I love you very much, but I have paid dearly for you." The Dauphin was not grieved at her death; old Montchevreuil had told him so many lies of his wife that he could not love her. That old Maintenon hoped, when this event happened, that she should be able to govern the Duke by means of his mistresses, which could not have been if he had continued to be attached to his wife. This old woman had conceived so violent a hatred against the poor Princess, that I do believe she prevailed on Clement, the accoucheur, to treat her ill in her confinement; and what confirms me in this is that she almost killed her by visiting her at that time in perfumed gloves. She said it was I who wore them, which was untrue. I would not swear that the Dauphine did not love Bessola better than her husband; she deserved no such attachment. I often apprised her mistress of her perfidy, but she would not believe me.
The Dauphine used to say, "We are two unhappy persons, but there is this difference between us: you endeavoured, as much as you could, to avoid coming here; while I resolved to do so at all events. I have therefore deserved my misery more than you."
They wanted to make her pass for crazy, because she was always complaining. Some hours before her death she said to me, "I shall convince them to-day that I was not mad in complaining of my sufferings." She died calmly and easily; but she was as much put to death as if she had been killed by a pistol-shot.
When her funeral service was performed I carried the taper (nota bene) and some pieces of gold to the Bishop who performed the grand mass, and who was sitting in an arm-chair near the altar. The prelate intended to have given them to his assistants, the priests of the King's chapel; but the monks of Saint Denis ran to him with great eagerness, exclaiming that the taper and the gold belonged to them. They threw themselves upon the Bishop, whose chair began to totter, and made his mitre fall from his head. If I had stayed there a moment longer the Bishop, with all the monks, would have fallen upon me. I descended the four steps of the altar in great haste, for I was nimble enough at that time, and looked on the battle at a distance, which appeared so comical that I could not but laugh, and everybody present did the same.
That wicked Bessola, who had tormented the Dauphine day and night, and had made her distrust every one who approached her, and thus separated her from all the world, returned home a year after her mistress's death. Before her departure she played another trick by having a box made with a double bottom, in which she concealed jewels and ready money to the amount of 100,000 francs; and all this time she went about weeping and complaining that, after so many years of faithful service, she was dismissed as poor as a beggar. She did not know that her contrivance had been discovered at the Customhouse and that the King had been apprised of it. He ordered her to be sent for, showed her the things which she had prepared to carry away, and said he thought she had little reason to complain of the Dauphine's parsimony. It may be imagined how foolish she looked. The King added that, although he might withhold them from her, yet to show her that she had done wrong in acting clandestinely, and in complaining as she had done, he chose to restore her the whole.