herself. The bitterest despair was depicted on her face. She saw her
sister-in-law, who was so hateful to her, all at once raised to that
title, that rank of dauphiness, which were about to place so great a
distance between them. Her frenzy of grief was not from affection, but
from interest; she would wrench herself from it to sustain her husband,
to embrace him, to console him, then she would become absorbed in herself
again with a torrent of tears, which helped her to stifle her shrieks.
The Duke of Orleans wept in his own corner, actually sobbing, a thing
which, had I not seen it, I should never have believed," adds St. Simon,
who detested Monseigneur, and had as great a dread of his reigning as the
Duke of Orleans had. "Madame, re-dressed in full dress, in the middle of
the night, arrived regularly howling, not quite knowing why either one or
the other; inundating them all with her tears as she embraced them, and
making the castle resound with a renewal of shrieks, when the king's
carriages were announced, on his return to Marly." The Duchess of
Burgundy was awaiting him on the road. She stepped down and went to the
carriage window. "What are you about, Madame?" exclaimed Madame de
Maintenon; "do not come near us, we are infectious." The king did not
embrace her, and she went back to the palace, but only to be at Marly
next morning before the king was awake.

The king's tears were as short as they had been abundant. He lost a son
who was fifty years old, the most submissive and most respectful creature
in the world, ever in awe of him and obedient to him, gentle and
good-natured, a proper man amid all his indolence and stupidity, brave
and even brilliant at head of an army. In 1688, in front of Philipsburg,
the soldiers had given him the name of "Louis the Bold." He was full of
spirits and always ready, "revelling in the trenches," says Vauban. The
Duke of Montausier, his boyhood's strict governor, had written to him,
"Monseigneur, I do not make you my compliments on the capture of