“Le Cardinal, une après-dînée, se mit à plaisanter la nièce sur ses galants. Il alla jusqu’à lui dire qu’elle etoit grosse. Marianne se fâcha tout rouge, et l’oncle de s’en amuser si bien qu’il continua la plaisanterie. On retrécit les robes de l’enfant, pour lui faire croire que sa taille s’arrondissait. Ses colères divertissaient toute la cour. Il n’était question que de son prochain accouchement, et Marianne, un beau matin, trouva dans ses draps un enfant qui venait de naître. Il fallut bien convenir alors de sa maternité. Elle jeta des cris de désespoir, et fit chorus longtemps avec son nouveau-né; elle assurait fort qu’elle ne s’était aperçu de rien.” To the child thus fooled, the Queen-mother, Anne of Austria, paid a visit of ceremony, and begged to be allowed to be godmother to the baby! The entire court turned fools on this occasion, waited on the imaginary mother in great pomp, and passed in ceremonious rotation before the bed, according to prescribed etiquette; and these fine people were in ecstasies! The elder sister of Marianne, Hortense, Duchess of Mazarin, says in her autobiography, of which not she, but St. Réal, was the author, “Ce fut un divertissement public. On pressa Marianne de déclarer le père de l’enfant, et elle répondit que ce ne pouvait être que le Roi ou le Comte de Guiche, car elle ne voyoit que ces deux hommes-là qui l’eussent embrassé.” Hortense, who was, as M. Renée remarks, “au courant de la chose,” testified her enjoyment of the joke by loud bursts of laughter. The court thought there had never been so choice a jester as the Cardinal; for of such complexion were the jokes of that time, and in this manner did fools of quality prepare the minds of little girls for this world and the next. As true wit however was found among the nobles and gentlemen at the court of the Grand Monarque as ever had been uttered by the liveliest of professional jesters. Sydney Smith, in his Lectures on Moral Philosophy, cites a sample which is of such excellence as to have received his high approbation. “Louis XIV.,” he says, “was exceedingly molested by the solicitations of a general officer at the levée, and cried out, loud enough to be heard, ‘That gentleman is the most troublesome officer in the whole army.’ ‘Your Majesty’s enemies have said the same thing more than once,’ was the answer; the wit of which,” adds the narrator, “consists in the sudden relation discovered in the officer’s assent to the King’s invective, and his own defence. By admitting the King’s observation, he seems, at first sight, to be subscribing to the King’s imputation against him; whereas, in reality, he effaces it by this very means.”