Nothing in the world disgusts me so much as the taking of snuff; it makes all noses horrible and spreads a fetid odour. I have known persons with sweet breath who in six months after they took to tobacco, smelt like goats With noses besmeared with snuff they look, forgive me the expression, as if they had tumbled into a cesspool. The king detested the habit, but his children and his grandchildren persisted in it, though they knew how he disliked it. Persons should abstain altogether, for if they take a little they soon want to take much. People call it the magic herb, because those who once begin to use it cannot go without it. PARIS, 1718. I received a letter yesterday from my daughter; she and her husband are, thank God, safely back at Lunéville in good health. She sends me the measure of the height of her eldest son, taken the week before he was eleven years old; he is just as tall as the Duc de Chartres, who will be fifteen next July. I am afraid my grandson Lorraine is going to be a giant, for the Duc de Chartres is not small for his age. All my Lorraine children are robust; their mother is healthy and always well; she is not good for nothing like Mme. d'Orléans. Never did any one hear of such laziness as hers. She has had a sofa made on which she can lie while playing lansquenet; we laugh at her, but it does no good. She plays cards lying down; she eats lying down; she reads lying down; in short, she spends nearly all her life lying down. It must be bad for her health; and in fact, she is almost always ill; one day she complains of her head, another of her stomach. But it seems, in spite of that, she can make robust children; her three eldest daughters are strong and healthy; the first and third are tall and stout; they are built like men,--Mlle. de Valois especially. The Montespan, the _guenipe_, and all the waiting-women made Mme. d'Orléans believe that she did my son great honour in consenting to marry him. She cannot endure any contradiction on the subject of her vanity in being daughter of the king; she does not comprehend the difference between legitimate and bastard children; her nature is proud and full of vanity; my son often calls her in jest Madame Lucifer. She takes all the flattering things that are said to her as her right. She thinks her husband prefers his eldest daughter, the Duchesse de Berry, to her; the daughter has no great affection for her mother. PARIS, 1718.