"MARIE LOUISE ÉLISABETH LABOURET; THOMAS-ALEXANDRE DUMAS-DAVY DE LA PAILLETERIE; widow of LA PAILLETERIE; LABOURET; MARIE-JOSEPH PRÉVOT; L. A. ESPAGNE; JEAN-JACQUES-ÉTIENNE DE BÉZE; JEAN--MICHEL DEVIOLAINE, and LONGPRÉ, Public Officer." Having settled that neither my father nor I were bastards, and reserving to myself to prove at the close of this chapter that my grandfather was no more illegitimate than we, I will continue. My mother, Marie-Louise-Élisabeth Labouret, was the daughter of Claude Labouret, as we saw, commandant of the National Guard and proprietor of the hôtel de l'_Écu_, at the time he signed his daughter's marriage contract, but formerly first steward of Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, son of that Louis d'Orléans who made so little noise, and father of Philippe-Joseph, later known as Philippe-Égalité, who made so much! Louis-Philippe died of an attack of gout, at the castle of Sainte-Assise, November the 18th, 1785. The Abbé Maury, who quarrelled so violently in 1791 with the son, had in 1786 pronounced the funeral oration over the father at Nôtre-Dame. I recollect having often heard my grandfather speak of that prince as an excellent and on the whole a charitable man, though inclined to avarice. But far before all others my grandfather worshipped Madame de Montesson to the verge of idolatry. We know how Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, left a widower after his first marriage with that famous Louise-Henriette de Bourbon-Conti, whose licentiousness had scandalised even the Court of Louis XV., had, on April the 24th, 1775, married as his second wife Charlotte-Jeanne Béraud de la Haie de Riou, marquise de Montesson, who in 1769 had been left the widow of the marquis de Montesson, lieutenant of the king's armies. This marriage, although it was kept secret, was made with the consent of Louis XV. Soulavie gives some curious details about its celebration and accomplishment which are of sufficient interest to confide to these pages. We feel sure these details are not unwelcome now that manners have become so different from what they then were. Let us first impress upon our readers that Madame de Montesson was supposed by Court and town to hold the extraordinary notion of not wishing to become the wife of M. le duc d'Orléans until after he had married her. M. de Noailles has since written a book which opened the doors of the Academy to him, upon the resistance of Madame de Maintenon to the solicitations of Louis XIV. under similar circumstances. Behold on what slight causes depends the homogeneity of incorporated associations! If the widow Scarron had not been a maid at the time of her second marriage, which was quite possible, M. de Noailles would not have written his book, and the Academy, which felt the need of M. de Noailles' presence, would have remained incomplete, and in consequence imperfect. That would not have mattered to M. de Noailles, who would always have remained M. de Noailles.