My son lives very well with me; he shows me great affection and will be miserable at losing me. His visits do me more good than quinine--they rejoice my heart and do not give me pains in my stomach. He always has something droll to tell me which makes me laugh; he has wit and expresses himself charmingly. I should be a most unnatural mother if I did not love him from the bottom of my heart; if you knew him you would see that he has no ambition and no malignity. Ah! my God, he is only too kind; he pardons all that is done against him and laughs about it. If he would only show his teeth to his wicked relations they would learn to fear him and cease their horrible machinations. You cannot imagine the wickedness and the ambition of the third prince of the blood. As long as M. le Duc hoped to get money out of my son he overwhelmed him with protestations of attachment and devotion; now that there is nothing more to get from him he has turned completely against him and has joined my son's inhuman enemy, the Prince de Conti. PARIS, 1720. I am coming to the close of my seventieth year, and I feel that if I have another shock like that which struck me so severely last year I shall soon know how things go on in the other world. My constitution continues sound, as may be seen by the fact that I have resisted all attacks, but, as the French proverb says, "the pitcher may go once too often to the well;" and that is what will happen to me in the end. But these thoughts do not trouble me, for we know that we come into this world only to die. I do not think that extreme old age is a pleasant thing; there is too much to suffer; and with regard to physical suffering I am a great coward. Saint François de Sales, who founded the Order of the Filles de Sainte-Marie, was in his youth a friend of the Maréchal de Villeroy, father of the present marshal. The marshal never could bring himself to give him his name as a saint, and when they spoke to him of his friend he used to say: "I was delighted when I heard that M. de Sales was a saint; he liked smutty stories and cheated at cards; the best man in the world in other respects, but a fool." I follow the fashions at a distance, and some of them I put aside entirely, such as paniers, which I do not wear, and loose gowns, which I cannot abide and will not permit in my presence. I think them indecent; women look as if they had just got out of their beds. There is no rule here now about the fashions. Tailors, dressmakers, and hairdressers invent what they please. I have never followed to excess the fashion of tall head-dresses. I do not know what you mean about your neighbours the storks never failing to come back every year. We have none in France, and I wish you would tell me if you see them in England; for it is said they never stay in any kingdom. PARIS, 1721.