Then she asked Mlle. de Brunet which was easier, to exact things from one's self, or from others. Mlle. de Brunet answered, "From ourselves." Several other young ladies were questioned and thought the same. "You are right," said Mme. de Maintenon. "I cannot understand how any one can think otherwise, because it seems to me more just and appropriate that we should inconvenience ourselves rather than inconvenience others; we ought always to be occupied in avoiding whatever may give pain to other people. Mme. la Duchesse de Bourgogne undertook a piece of work, to execute which she sent for a woman who embroiders, and this woman spent the whole of yesterday with her without her ever thinking of giving her anything to eat. I asked the woman in the evening if she had eaten; she said no, and I made her dine and sup both. The king, who is wonderfully attentive, reproved Mme. la Duchesse de Bourgogne severely; she tried to laugh it off, but he told her that he could not laugh at such a matter. I am convinced that that poor woman was not much pleased to find that while she worked hard, those she worked for let her go hungry. If such a mark of inattention, which might be very pardonable in a young princess of sixteen, was rebuked by the king with such seriousness, how much more should girls like you who will have to spend all your lives in attentions to others need reproof if you neglect them. "The king always astonishes me when he speaks of his own education. His governesses amused themselves, he says, all day, and left him in the hands of the maids without taking any care of him--you know that he began to reign when he was three and a half years old. He ate whatever he could lay hands on, without any attention being paid to the injury this was to his health; it was this that accustomed him to so much carelessness about himself. If they fricasseed an omelet he snatched bits of it, which Monsieur and he went off into a corner to eat. He relates sometimes that he spent his time mostly with a peasant girl, the child of a waiting-maid of the queen's waiting-maid. He called her Queen Marie, because they played at the game, '_à la madame_,' she taking the part of queen, and he serving her as page or footman, carrying her train, wheeling her in a chair, or marching with a torch in front of her. You can imagine whether little Queen Marie gave him good advice, and whether she was useful to him in any way." _On never omitting either labour or pains._ July, 1703.