De Bourgogne—lisped out in a shower,
in answer to the King's "fear he would get
wet," "Sire, the rain of Marly does not
wet,"—he expressed in one phrase the whole
of that lying, servile, court-priest world.
That phrase stuck to the wily abbé for life.

The learning of the court was on a par
with its morality. Ignorance was no disgrace:
success without birth was an infinitely worse
fault. The brave Cavoye was a thorn in Saint
Simon's aristocratic side: for he had made
himself a place at Court by his talents,
impudence, and good looks alone, and had neither
money nor friends; neither birth nor services
to back him. An ugly but very good creature,
Mademoiselle de Coetlogon, one of the Queen's
waiting women, fell in love with this brave
Cavoye; who repulsed her advances and even
treated her with brutality. Everyone pitied
La Coetlogon: and Cavoye was ordered by
the king to behave with more tenderness
towards her. He joined the army, and the
waiting woman was in tears till he returned.
The next year he was second in a duel,
and sent to the Bastille in consequence.
Coetlogon's despair knew no bounds. She
threw aside her ornaments, clad herself as
meanly as possible, then went to supplicate
the king for his release. The king refused,
and she quarrelled with him so violently,
that "she would have used her nails had he
not been too wise to expose himself to them."
She then refused to perform her duties, and
grew so ill that she was allowed to visit her
lover at the Bastille to keep her alive. By
and bye Cavoye was released, and when
the office of Grand Maréchal des Logis was
vacant it was offered to him on the
condition of his marrying La Coetlogon. "He
sniffed a little longer," but submitted to his
fate: and Coetlogon, as his wife, continued
her love making and caresses in public, while
he could bring himself to nothing more
responsive than acquiescent non-resistance.

There was a Madame Panache at court;
"a little and very old creature, with eyes and
lips so disfigured that they were painful to
look upon; a species of beggar, who had
obtained a footing at court from being half-
witted, who was now at the supper of the
king and now at the dinner of Monseigneur,
or at other places, where everybody amused
themselves by tormenting her. The princes
and princesses emptied into her pockets meats
and ragouts, the sauces of which ran all down
her petticoats. At these parties some gave
her a pistole, or a crown, and others a fillip
or a smack in the face, which put her in a
fury, because, with her bleared eyes not being
able to see to the end of her nose, she could
not tell who had struck her." This was one
of the elegant pastimes of the courtly household
of Louis the Fourteenth. Then there
was the Princesse d'Harcourt, on whom also
many pleasant tricks were played. "A tall,
fat creature, mightily brisk in her
movements, with a complexion like milk porridge,
great, ugly, thick lips, and hair like tow,
always sticking out and hanging in disorder,
like all the rest of her fittings out;" dirty,
slatternly, intriguing, mendacious, even in
that most mendacious court; "a blonde
fury, nay a harpy;" avaricious, gluttonous,
and with unheard-of effrontery and indecency.
She yet was the favourite of Madame de
Maintenon and the butt of everyone else.
Her servants played her tricks; so did the
courtiers. Once they pelted her with
snowballs in bed: of which sport hear Saint
Simon, in Mr. Saint John's Translation of his
Memoirs: "The filthy creature, waking up
with, a start, bruised and stifled in snow,
with which even her ears were filled; with
dishevelled hair, yelling at the top of her
voice, and wriggling like an eel, without
knowing where to hide, formed a spectacle
that diverted people more than half an hour:
so that, at last, the nymph swam in her bed,
from which the water flowed everywhere,
slushing all the chamber. It was enough to
make one die of laughter," says Saint Simon.
On the morrow she sulked, and was more
than ever laughed at.

Another practical joke of the same courtly
character had a more tragical ending.
Monsieur le Duc de Condé had a supper party.
Among the guests was Santeuil, canon of
Saint Victor, a famous Latin poet, good-
humoured, jovial, and a general favourite.
Monsieur le Duc diverted himself by making
Santeuil drink immoderately of champagne;
when, to finish the joke, he emptied his snuffbox
full of Spanish snuff, into his glass to
see what would happen. He drank it off;
and in twenty-four hours poor Santeuil was
dead, after suffering frightful torments; but
no one troubled the Duc about it.

Madame Pelot, in jest, called Monsieur la
Vauguyon a poltroon for refusing a certain
stake at brelan. After the rest of the
company had gone, La Vauguyon " bolted the
door, clapped his hat on his head, drove her
up against the chimney, and, holding her
head between his two fists, said he knew no
reason why he should not pound it into a
jelly to teach her to call him poltroon again.
The poor woman was horribly frightened,
and made perpendicular curtseys between
his fists and all sorts of excuses." La
Vauguyon was half mad then. Eventually he
became wholly so; and, after doing many wild
and dangerous things, died by his own hand.

The king's brother falls ill. He has been
twice or thrice before on the verge of death
from his excessive gluttony. But, this time,
the blow really falls. The king, who has been
estranged from him for some months, hears
the news with great composure; but, at
midnight, orders his carriage to be ready to
take him to Saint Cloud, should worse news
arrive. In the meantime, he goes to bed,
but is roused by two messengers, the one of
whom reports that Monsieur has just asked
for some Schaffhausen-water, the other that