Louis XIV and La Grande Mademoiselle, 1652-1693Barine, Arvède
History
Louis XIV and La Grande Mademoiselle, 1652-1693
Barine, Arvède
Louis XIV, King of France, 1638-1715; Montpensier, Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans, duchesse de, 1627-1693
On the 31st, she decided at length to return to Paris: "I was very bored
there, and could not discover what I had done at Saint-Germain which had
so much diverted me." She hastened to rejoin the Court, without knowing
why, and commenced again her conversations with Lauzun, but still
remained unconscious of any sentiment. She only knew that she was
troubled and agitated, and discontented with her condition, and that she
felt a desire to marry. The desire dated back a long time, but of late
it had become so insistent that Mademoiselle was forced to examine
herself seriously.
The passage in which she relates her discovery is charmingly natural and
significantly true:
I reasoned with myself (for I did not speak to any one) and I
said, 'this is no longer a vague thought; it must have some
object.' I did not discover who it was. I sought, I dreamed,
but could not find out. Finally, after some days of anxiety, I
perceived that it was M. de Lauzun whom I loved, who had glided
into my heart. I thought him the most worthy man in the world,
the most agreeable; nothing was lacking to make me happy but a
husband like him, whom I should love and who would love me
devotedly; that heretofore I had never been loved; that it was
necessary once in life to taste the sweetness of being adored by
some one, which would make worth while the sufferings caused by
the pangs of love.
This explanation of her own heart was followed by days of intoxication.
Mademoiselle lived in a dream, and all was easy, all was arranged: "It
appeared to me that I found more pleasure in seeing him and in talking
to him than heretofore; that the days in which he was absent, I was
bored, and I believe that the same feeling came to him; that he did not
care to confess this, but the pains he took to come wherever he was
likely to meet me made the fact clear." In the absence of Lauzun, she
sought solitude in order to think of him freely. "I was delighted to be
alone in my chamber; I formed plans of what I could do for him which
would give him a higher position."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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