A less vicious characteristic of the society of Versailles, but one greatly at variance with the refinement which we associate with the age of Louis XIV, was the love of brutal and even cruel horse-play. We read in Saint-Simon of a poor old woman named Mme Panache, whose pockets the princes and princesses used to fill with roast and stewed meat, till the sauce ran down her petticoats. Or they would fillip her face and laugh at her fury, at not being able to tell who had struck her--for she could not see beyond the end of her nose. Another butt was the Princesse d’Harcourt, ugly, dirty, greedy, malicious, dishonest. She never missed a religious service, and was a constant communicant, generally after having played at cards--and openly cheated--till four in the morning. She certainly did not deserve much consideration, but her character hardly justified the Duchess of Burgundy and her ladies in making their way into her bedroom and pelting her with snowballs for half-an-hour[8]. [8] _Mémoires_, III, 346-351. Practical joking, even when it was more or less friendly, often took a brutal or disgusting form. Louis XIV himself, that model of dignity and high-breeding, used to amuse himself with putting hair into the butter and tarts destined for Mlle de Montpensier and Mme de Thianges (the sister of Mme de Montespan), both of whom were very particular about their food. The Duc de Bourbon, La Bruyère’s pupil, and his Duchess especially distinguished themselves in this unpleasant fashion. The Duchess once flung a glass of water in the face of Santeul, the distinguished Latin poet, who was their habitual guest at Chantilly, and the Duke nearly killed him by emptying his snuff-box into his glass of champagne. On a par with these elementary notions of social merriment was the complete want of privacy and the lack of even ordinary decency. It is not too much to say that the standard of comfort at the Court of Versailles in the days of the _grand monarque_ was lower than that of an English labourer at the present day. The lack of privacy which strikes the modern reader of Saint-Simon presumably did not trouble his contemporaries, to whom it would have seemed only natural. Certainly it did not trouble Louis XIV, who suffered from it more than anybody, but who seems to have delighted in the perpetual presence of his courtiers, as giving him ample opportunity of observing their goings in and goings out. It was part of the _espionnage_ which was one of the worst features of the _ancien régime_, and which shewed itself in more unpleasant forms, such as the strict police supervision exercised by that most capable of chiefs, Marc-René d’Argenson, and the habitual opening of letters, whatever the rank of the writers. An even more unpleasant sign of despotic government was the practice of granting _lettres de cachet_ on the unsupported statement of the applicant.