That old Beauvais, the Queen-mother's first femme de chambre, was
acquainted with the secret of her marriage, and this obliged the Queen to
put up with whatever the confidante chose to do. From this circumstance
has arisen that custom which gives femmes de chambre so much authority in
our apartments. The Queen-mother, the widow of Louis XIII., not
contented with loving Cardinal Mazarin, went the absurd length of
marrying him. He was not a priest, and therefore was not prevented by
his orders from contracting matrimony. He soon, however, got very tired
of the poor Queen, and treated her dreadfully ill, which is the ordinary
result in such marriages. But it is the vice of the times to contract
clandestine marriages. The Queen-mother of England, the widow of Charles
II., made such an one in marrying her chevalier d'honneur, who behaved
very ill to her; while the poor Queen was in want of food and fuel, he
had a good fire in his apartment, and was giving great dinners. He
called himself Lord Germain, Earl of St. Albans; he never addressed a
kind expression to the Queen. As to the Queen-mother's marriage, all the
circumstances relating to it are now well enough known. The secret
passage by which he went nightly to the Palais Royal may still be seen;
when she used to visit him, he was in the habit of saying, "what does
this woman want with me?" He was in love with a lady of the Queen's
suite, whom I knew very well: she had apartments in the Palais Royal, and
was called Madame de Bregie. As she was very pretty, she excited a good
deal of passion; but she was a very honest lady, who served the Queen
with great fidelity, and was the cause of the Cardinal's living upon
better terms with the Queen than before. She had very good sense.
Monsieur loved her for her fidelity to the Queen his mother. She has
been dead now four-and-twenty years (1717).

The Princesse de Deux Ponts has recently furnished another instance of
the misfortune which usually attends the secret marriages of ladies of