"I repeat, my children, that you should never neglect to learn everything you can learn. Nothing so marks the intelligence of a person as liking to see and learn how a thing is done. I am charmed with Jeannette; it is surprising that a child of her age should apply herself as she does; the other day she spent half an hour watching to see how a lock was put on; she looked it over in every way and gave her whole attention to it. Mme. la Duchesse de Bourgogne knows how to do every kind of work; I am often astonished by it. I think she must have been brought up like our princes, and that some waiting-woman, to pay her court, taught her these things. She does not need to learn any of the handicrafts wherever she is, for she knows them all; you could teach her nothing. Also, would you believe it? she understands about fevers; she feels my pulse when she thinks I am ill, and what she says about me is sure to be the same that M. Fagon says afterwards. She knows how to spin wool, flax, silk, how to use a spinning-wheel, how to knit, and she has lately embroidered for herself a gown of yellow taffetas. I used to spin myself; to please my governess, I spun her a gown. M. de Louvois knew all sorts of trades; he had enormously thick fingers, almost as large as two of my thumbs, and yet he could take a watch to pieces with wonderful nicety, though there is nothing more delicate to handle. He could be shoemaker, mason, gardener, etc. One day when I was winding silk on two cards, or squares, of a pretty shape, while he worked with the king in my room, he was dying of curiosity to know how the pretty thing that I held was made. The king noticed this, and told me in a low voice. I showed it to him; he unwound the silk, examined the card, and put it together again most adroitly. "There is nothing that we have not, sometime or other, a need to know. In the days when I brought up the princes [Louis XIV.'s children by Mme. de Montespan] it was necessary to keep them concealed; and for that purpose we were constantly changing our place of residence, and the tapestries had to be rehung each time. I used to mount the ladder myself, for I often had no one to help me and I dared not make the nurses do it; in that way I learned a trade I am sure I should never have learned otherwise." "It was because you had great energy," said a mistress. "It is true," replied Madame, "that I did have energy in my youth." "That is just what is wanting to our young ladies," said the mistress; "they are so tired with the least exertion that they can hardly walk round the garden without fatigue."