In the days of Louis XIV. letters were unsealed at the post-office, read, and extracts made and sent to the king, and sometimes to Mme. de Maintenon. Madame knew that, but went her way in spite of it, using her privilege as princess to tell truths without reserve, and even to write insults on those who, unsealing the letters, would find her opinion of them. "In the days of M. de Louvois," she writes, "they read all letters just as they do now, but at least they sent them on in decent time; but now that that toad of a Torcy directs the post-office, letters are delayed for an interminable length of time.... As Torcy does not know how to read German he has to have them translated, and I don't thank him for his attention." M. de Torcy must have enjoyed that passage. Among the tastes, or fancies, which together with her letter-writing served to fill and amuse the long hours of Madame's solitude, we must reckon two parrots, a canary, and eight little dogs. "After my dinner I walk my room for half an hour for the sake of digestion, and play with my little animals." A nobler taste was that of coins, which Madame had to a high degree. She collected them from all parts of the world, and no one could pay their court more delicately than by bringing her a specimen. The collection that she thus formed was celebrated. She confided the care of it to the learned Baudelot, who had all the erudition and naïveté of an antiquary, and with whom she sometimes amused herself. "One study alone," says one of her eulogists, "attracted her--that of coins. Her series of the emperors of the upper and lower empire, which she collected with judgment and arranged with care, placed before her eyes all that was most to be respected in past ages. While examining the features on the coins she recalled the salient points of their owners' actions, filling her mind with noble ideas of Roman greatness." I do not know whether in forming her cabinet of coins Madame had any such lofty and stern views, but at any rate, in this most remarkable of her tastes she showed herself the mother of the regent,--that is to say, of the most brilliant and best-informed of amateurs.