bells delighted him beyond all expression. He liked Paris better than
any other place, because his secretary was there, and he lived under less
restraint than at Versailles. He wrote so badly that he was often
puzzled to read his own letters, and would bring them to me to decipher
them.

"Here, Madame," he used to say, laughing, "you are accustomed to my
writing; be so good as to read me this, for I really cannot tell what I
have been writing." We have often laughed at it.

He was of a good disposition enough, and if he had not yielded so
entirely to the bad advice of his favourites, he would have been the best
master in the world. I loved him, although he had caused me a great deal
of pain; but during the last three years of his life that was totally
altered. I had brought him to laugh at his own weakness, and even to
take jokes without caring for them. From the period that I had been
calumniated and accused, he would suffer no one again to annoy me; he had
the most perfect confidence in me, and took my part so decidedly, that
his favourites dared not practise against me. But before that I had
suffered terribly. I was just about to be happy, when Providence thought
fit to deprive me of my poor husband. For thirty years I had been
labouring to gain him to myself, and, just as my design seemed to be
accomplished, he died. He had been so much importuned upon the subject
of my affection for him that he begged me for Heaven's sake not to love
him any longer, because it was so troublesome. I never suffered him to
go alone anywhere without his express orders.

The King often complained that he had not been allowed to converse
sufficiently with people in his youth; but taciturnity was a part of his
character, for Monsieur, who was brought up with him, conversed with