On one point Madame sacrificed to the spirit of the regency and was in curious contradiction to herself. She took a great liking to a natural son of the regent, whom he had by an opera-dancer named Florence; she said he reminded her of the "late Monsieur," only with a better figure. In short, she loved the young man, whom she called _her_ Abbé de Saint-Albin. He was afterwards Archbishop of Cambrai, and when he made his argument before the Sorbonne (February, 1718) she was present in great state, thus declaring, and also honouring, the illegitimate birth of this grandson. Madame deserted on that day all her orthodox principles about the duties of rank, and allowed herself to follow her fancies. She died at the age of seventy at Saint-Cloud, December 8, 1722, ten days after her faithful friend, the Maréchale de Clérembault, and one year before her son, the regent. According to her own wish, she was taken to Saint-Denis without pomp. The obsequies were performed in the following February. Massillon, whom she knew and loved, pronounced her funeral oration, which was thought fine. Père Cathalan, a Jesuit, pronounced another at Laon in March, from which I have taken certain traits of her character. Such as she is, with all her coarseness and her contradictions on a basis of virtue and honour, Madame is a useful, a precious, and an incomparable witness as to manners and morals. She gives a hand to Saint-Simon and to Dangeau--nearer, however, to the former than to the latter. She has heart; do not ask charm of her, but say: "That Court would have lacked the most original of figures and of voices if Madame had not been of it." Arriving at Versailles at the moment when the La Vallière star declined and was eclipsed, and seeing only the last of the brilliant years, she enters little into that era of refinement which touches the imagination; but lacking that refinement, and solely through her frankness, she lays bare to us the second half of Louis XIV.'s reign under its human, most human, natural, and--to say the whole truth--its material aspect. She strips that great century of its idealism, she strips it too much; she goes almost to the point of degrading it--if we listen to her alone. As time goes on, and the delicacy and purity of manners and language retire more and more into Mme. de Maintenon's corner and seek at last a refuge at Saint-Cyr, Madame holds herself aloof at Saint-Cloud, and again aloof in the Palais-Royal, and thence--whether at the close of Louis XIV.'s reign or under the regency--she makes, lance in hand, and her pen behind her ear, valiant and frequent sorties in that blunt style which is all her own, which wears a beard upon its chin, and of which we know not rightly whether it derives from Luther or from Rabelais, though we are very sure it is the opposite of that of Mme. de Caylus and her like. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.