The Great Mademoiselle Buys Choisy.--The President Gonthier.--The Indemnity.--The Salmon.--The Harangue as It Is Not Done in the Academy.
The King had only caused against his own desire the extreme grief which Mademoiselle felt at the imprisonment of Lauzun. His Majesty was sensible of the wisdom of the resolution which she had made not to break with the Court, and to show herself at Saint Germain, or at Versailles, from time to time, as her rank, her near kinship, her birth demanded.
He said to me one day: "My cousin is beginning to look up. I see with pleasure that her complexion is clearing, that she laughs willingly at this and that, and that her good-will for me is restored. I am told that she is occupied in building a country-house above Vitry. Let us go to-day and surprise her, and see what this house of Choisy is like."We arrived at a sufficiently early hour, and had time to see everything.
The King found the situation most agreeable; those lovely gardens united high up above the Seine, those woods full of broad walks, of light and air, those points of view happily chosen and arranged, gave a charming effect; the house of one story, raised on steps of sixteen stairs, appeared to us elegant from its novelty; but the King blamed his cousin for not having put a little architecture and ornament on the facade.
"Princes," said he, "have no right to be careless; since universal agreement has made us Highnesses, we must know how to carry our burden, and to lay it down at no time, and in no place."Mademoiselle excused herself on the ground of her remoteness from the world, and on the expense, which she wished to keep down.
"From the sight of the country," said the King, "you must have a hundred to a hundred and twelve, acres here.""A hundred and nine," she answered.
"Have you paid dear for this property?" went on the King. "It is the President Gonthier who has sold it?""I paid for this site, and the old house which no longer exists, forty thousand livres," she said.
"Forty thousand livres!" cried the King. "Oh, my cousin, there is no such thing as conscience! You have not paid for the ground. I was assured that poor President Gonthier had only got rid of his house at Choisy because his affairs were embarrassed; you must indemnify him, or rather I will indemnify him myself, by giving him a pension."Mademoiselle bit her lip and added:
"The President asked sixty thousand first; my men of business offered him forty, and he accepted it."Mademoiselle has no generosity, although she is immensely rich; she pretended not to hear, and it was M. Colbert who sent by order the twenty thousand livres to the President.
Mademoiselle, vain and petty, as though she were a bourgeoise of yesterday, showed us her gallery, where she had already collected the selected portraits of all her ancestors, relations, and kindred; she pointed out to us in her winter salon the portrait of the little Comte de Toulouse, painted, not as an admiral, but as God of the Sea, floating on a pearl shell; and his brother, the Duc du Maine, as Colonel-General of the Swiss and Grisons. The full-length portrait of the King was visible on three chimneypieces; she was at great pains to make a merit of it, and call for thanks.
