This hatred for everything connected with illegitimacy was certainly the origin of the chaste reserve which was to characterize so particularly him who was the son of Henri IV. and the father of Louis XIV. From his illegitimate brothers, this aversion extended to their mothers, whom he qualified in very contemptuous terms, and to the intrigues in which they were engaged. “Shall you be as ribald as the King?” said his nurse to him one day. “No,” he answered, after a moment’s reflection. And on her asking him if he was in love, he replied, “No, I avoid love.”[58] It was especially after Henri IV.’s death that the tendencies of the young king revealed themselves. He loved his father tenderly, a great deal more than Marie de Medicis did, who, moreover, never showed much affection for her elder son. He worthily wept his violent death,[59] and long afterwards, hearing at the Louvre, one of the late King’s songs, he went aside to sob.[60] But if, while yet a child, he had appreciated the glory of Henri IV., if he had shared his patriotic sentiments, if he was proud of his victories, he had silently blamed the licence which, in acts, and still more in language, then rendered the French Court one of the most gross in Europe. As King, he would not tolerate these excesses. He showed himself openly austere in his speech, and modest in his actions, forbade in his presence obscene songs and scandalous conversations, and in order to avoid any pretext for them, replied sharply to M. de Souvré, his governor, when he wished to talk with him about marriage: “Do not let us speak of that, sir; do not let us speak of that.”