Presented to the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY

by the

ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE
LIBRARY

1980

By ARVEDE BARINE

Authorized English Versions. Each Octavo
Fully Illustrated. (By mail, $3:25.) Net, $3.00

The Youth of La Grande Mademoiselle

1627-1652

Louis XIV. and La Grande Mademoiselle

1652-1693

Princesses and Court Ladies
Madame, Mother of the Regent

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*>

Madame

Mother of the Regent
^uwftL 1652-1722 7 ^

By

9 Arvede Barine

Author of " La Grande Mademoiselle," " Princesses and
Court Ladies," etc.

Translated by

Jeanne Mairet

(Madame Charles Bigot)

l ;

Illustrated

^

iQ ' G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London
Iftnicfterbocfter

1909

PYRIGHT, 1909
BY

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

DC

7

Ubc Ifcnicfccrbocfter |>re00, View

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

A RVEDE BARINE (Mme. Charles Vincens)
^* died November 14, 1908. The last chapter
of her book Madame was planned, but not
written.

All her readers admired Mme. Arvede Barine's,
great charm of style, her extraordinary powers
of psychological observation, her indefatigable in-
dustry, 'her conscientiousness, and especially her
rare gift of making the people who appear in her
books live and breathe, act, speak, hate, love
before our very eyes. With all her many gifts,
never was writer, man or woman, more truly
modest. She never spoke of herself or of her
works.

To the world of letters, her death is a great
loss; to those who loved her and they were
many a great sorrow.

This is no official history: it is a familiar and
intimate story of Madame, of Louis XIV., and of
those who surrounded him. Madame was a wide-
awake witness; she opened her eyes, noted, and
wrote wrote unceasingly, abundantly, indis-
creetly, and always with a spirit which made of her
correspondence a mine for historians, especially
for those who hated France.

Elisabeth Charlotte, familiarly known as Lise-

iv Translator's Preface

lotte, was the daughter of Carl-Ludwig, Elector
of the Palatinate.

Germany had barely recovered from the fright-
ful Thirty Years' War, which had made a desert
of whole regions. The Palatinate had almost
ceased to exist. The misery was such that the
few survivors of that once flourishing country,
according to the German historian Hausser, lived
chiefly on human flesh; cannibalism had been
established with terrible facility. Toward 1636,
in the Palatinate, there were cook-shops exclu-
sively used for fresh human meat.

When Carl-Ludwig returned to Heidelberg,
after years of exile and hardships, he found that
everything had to be, not restored, but in reality
founded. Luckily, he was a prudent and sparing
man. Little Liselotte grew up in a pacified and
happy land, a merry tomboy of a child, roaming
about at will, always ready to laugh at everything,
most of all at her own plain face with its crooked
nose and its big flat cheeks.

At nineteen, Princess Liselotte, much against
her will, became Duchesse d'Or!6ans, " Madame,"
according to her official title. Liselotte had no
vocation for matrimony. In her old age, she
wrote: "If I had been my own mistress, I should
never have married. " Besides, she loved Germany
and all that was German. Beforehand, she hated
everything that was French.

On her way from Strasburg, where the marriage
by proxy had been celebrated, to Chalons, where

Translator's Preface v

the Duke met her, she "did nothing but howl all
night." But when Louis XIV., a little later,
visited the young couple at Villers-Cottret, the
tears turned to smiles. So long as the King was
amiable, the sun was bright and Liselotte was
happy.

For years, things went well with the German
Princess. But little by little, her happiness was
dimmed. Domestic troubles were rife. Besides,
that the Elector of the Palatinate should happen
to be the father of his sister-in-law, by no means
deterred Louis XIV. from considering that portion
of Germany as a Heaven-appointed battle-field
for France. In the midst of many tribulations,
Carl-Ludwig died, and in his daughter's natural
grief at her bereavement, there entered many
elements which Arvede Barine lays bare with
extraordinary insight and rare psychological power.

At this period (1680) the favour of Mme. de
Maintenon at the court of France was very great
and was growing every day. Liselotte hated Mme.
de Maintenon with a hearty and most feminine
hatred. She was horribly jealous of her. The
"old nuisance," as she called her, was the friend,
the intimate associate of Louis XIV. all indeed,
that Liselotte had been, or fancied she had been.
For her, there were no longer any tete-k-tete
conversations, nor any hunting, riding, or driving
with the King. And this, Madame could not, and
did not, forgive. Her letters prove this most
abundantly.

vi Translator's Preface

Madame had always been a good mother. But
even in her best affections she was impulsive,
and her impulses sometimes amazed eye-witnesses.
The King decided that her son, the future Regent,
should marry his daughter by Mme. de Montespan,
Mile, de Blois. Our Princess was forced to submit,
but she did not hide her real feelings. After the
engagement had been solemnly announced by
the King, Madame, when her son attempted to kiss
her hand, administered that sounding box on the
ear which, ever since, has echoed through history.

Then came the death of Monsieur, and Madame,
who at last had been reconciled to her husband,
was aghast at her loneliness and at her defenceless
position. Mme. de Maintenon who, thanks to
the police, had read many of the letters in which
Madame had abused her, magnanimously advised
Madame to profit by the King's softened mood
to seek her pardon.

In Germany, all expected that, once liberated
from an odious marriage, Liselotte would hasten
back to her beloved country. She did nothing of
the kind. She was mistress of her actions but
she chose to remain in France, to hover about a
court, where she was no longer very welcome.
The fascination exercised by Louis XIV. was too
great to be shaken off. She remained in France
even after the death of her idol, until she herself
died in 1722.

April, 1909.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

HER FAMILY GERMANY AFTER THE THIRTY YEARS'

WAR CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH . . i

CHAPTER II
MARRIAGE FIRST YEARS IN FRANCE . .61

CHAPTER III

THE BUDGET OF A PRINCESS THE GERMAN FAMILY
HAPPY YEARS THE COURT OF FRANCE IN
1679 126

CHAPTER IV

DEATH OF CARL-LUDWIG LISELOTTE, THE KING,

AND MME. DEMAINTENON GREAT SORROWS . 182

CHAPTER V

GERMANY AND RELIGION MATERNITY DEATH OF

MONSIEUR APPEASEMENT . . . . 247

CHAPTER VI

EPILOGUE: LAST YEARS OF THE REIGN OF Louis
XIV SOLITUDE AND WEARINESS THE RE-
GENCY ISOLATION SADNESS DEATH . . 308

INDEX 337

vn

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

MADAME, MOTHER OF THE REGENT . Frontispiece

From the portrait in the Chateau of Versailles.

MADAME, MOTHER OF THE REGENT . 4

From the portrait by Rigaud in the Chateau of
Versailles.

Louis XIV 16

From the portrait by Rigaud in the Chateau of
Versailles. Photo. Neurdein.

MADAME, YOUTHFUL PORTRAIT .... 46
From a print in Bibliotheque Nationale.

PHILIPPE, Due D'ORLEANS, M. . . .62

From a print in Bibliotheque Nationale.

FONTAINEBLEAU AT THE TlME OF LOUIS XIV . . 68

From a painting in the Chateau of Versailles.

MADAME DE MAINTENON AND HER NIECE . . 80

From the portrait by F. Elle in the Chateau of Ver-
sailles. Photo. Neurdein.

MADAME ON HORSEBACK ..... 88

From a print in Bibliotheque Nationale.

CHARLES, BROTHER OF MADAME .... 98
From a print in Bibliotheque Nationale.

ELISABETH CHARLOTTE, DAUGHTER OF MADAME . 104
From a portrait in the Chateau of Versailles.

QUEEN MARIE THERESE, WIFE OF Louis XIV . 128

From the portrait in the Chateau of Versailles,
ix

x Illustrations

PAGE

THE DUCHESSE DU BARRY ..... 132

From a painting in the Chateau of Versailles.

MADEMOISELLE DE BLOIS, WIFE OF THE REGENT . 148
From the Chateau of Versailles. Photo. Neurdein.

THE Due DE CHARTRES, SON OF MONSIEUR AND

MADAME, THE REGENT ..... 168
From the portrait in the Chateau of Versailles.

THE GRAND DAUPHIN, SON OF Louis XIV, AND HIS

FAMILY . . . . . . .174

From the portrait by Mignard in the Louvre Museum.
Photo. Neurdein.

THE CHATEAU OF VERSAILLES AT THE TIME OF Louis

XIV 200

From the painting by Martin in the Chateau of Ver-
sailles. Photo. Neurdein.

MADAME INTRODUCING THE ELECTOR OF SAXONY TO

Louis XIV 220

From the painting by Louis de Silvestre in the Chateau
of Versailles. Photo. Neurdein.

CHATEAU DE VILLERS COTTERETS . . . 230

From a print in Bibliothque Nationale.

VIEW OF HEIDELBERG IN XVII CENTURY . . 246
From a print in Bibliotheque Nationale.

MARRIAGE OF THE Due DE BOURGOGNE AND MARIE

DE SAVOIE 260

From the painting by Gerard in the Chateau of Ver-
sailles. Photo. Neurdein.

CARDINAL DUBOIS ...... 268

From an engraving after the portrait by Rigaud.

Illustrations xi

PAGE

Louis XV AS A CHILD 274

From the portrait by Rigaud in the Chateau of Ver-
sailles. Photo. Neurdein.

FATHER OF MADAME. CHARLES Louis, ELECTOR PALA-
TINE ........ 328

From a print in Bibliotheque Nationale.

MADAME, MEDALLION ALLEGORICAL PORTRAIT . 336
From a print in Bibliotheque Nationale.

MADAME

MOTHER OF THE REGENT

CHAPTER I

HER FAMILY GERMANY AFTER THE THIRTY YEARS'

WAR CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH

JVA ADAME, Duchesse d'Orleans and mother of
* ** the Regent, spent her life writing letters:
to relatives with whom she was acquainted, and to
many whom she had never seen; to her friends,
to her cronies, to her men of business, and, accord-
ing to her own account, "to every one that came
along." In her youth, she divided her time
between her inkstand and the pleasures, or drudg-
ery, of the French court. As years went by,
her correspondence took up, hour by hour, pretty
nearly all her time. Finally, she wrote ten or
twelve letters a day, each twenty or thirty pages
long; for these, she made use of the immense sheets
of paper then in vogue. Every mail and all avail-
able private means carried these missives to
foreign parts. For neighbouring places, like Ver-
sailles or Saint-Cloud, she trusted them, morning
and evening, to a couple of pages employed solely
for this purpose. Numberless epistles, full of many

2 Madame

details and of interminable repetitions, informed
France and the whole of Europe, what, that day,
had caused Her Royal Highness to laugh or to
weep. Sometimes, also, they revealed the state of
the King's affairs, as seen through his sister-in-
law's spectacles.

Thousands of these large sheets, covered with
her firm writing, are to be found in the public
and private archives of foreign countries. In
France, we have but the crumbs fallen from this
rich table. Germany has been more favoured.
The greater part of Madame's correspondence,
that which never fails, in which she says "all
that passes through her head," has naturally
remained in her native land, addressed to her
family and the friends of her youth. It would have
been out of the question to publish these letters
In extenso the continual repetitions and the
flow of mere gossip would have discouraged any
reader. On the other hand, all that concerned
the Regent's mother herself is highly prized by
her countrymen. She was an interesting person
and reflected great honour on her compatriots.
Beside^and they acknowledge this frankly
they relish her sharp criticisms of France and of
the French. Her German editors have dealt
fairly by her. They have culled from the letters,
submitted to them by the generous owners, all
that could throw any light on the life of their
princess, on her surroundings, on her joys and her
sorrows, on her ideas, her passions, her vigorous

Her Family 3

and unrelenting hatreds. Nowadays, in spite of
editorial scissors, 1 in spite of all that yet sleeps
in forgotten or inaccessible portfolios, no other
historical personage, perhaps, is so thoroughly
known as Madame. 2

The time has therefore come when one may
attempt to portray the most German of German
women, the most refractory to foreign influences

1 Wolfgang Menzel, editor of vol. i. of the letters addressed to
the Raugraves, says in his Introduction, p. xiii. : " It has been impos-
sible to give more than one third of the whole."

2 Books of reference : Memoiren der Herzogin Sophie nachmals
Kurfurstin von Hannover, ed. by Dr. Adolf KOcher (Leipzig, i vol.,
in 8, 1879, Hirzel) Briefwechsel der Herzogin Sophie von Han-
nover mit ihrem bruder, dem Kurfursten Karl-Ludwig von der Pfalz t
etc.,ed. by Ed. Bodemann (Leipzig, i vol. in 8, 1886, Hirzel) Aus
den briefen der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte von Orleans an der
Kurfurstin Sophie von Hannover, ed. by Ed. Bodemann (Hannover,
2 vols. in 8, 1891, Hahn'sche Buchhandlung) Brief e der Herzogin
Elisabeth Charlotte von Orleans zur A. K. von Harling, etc., ed.
by Ed. Bodemann (Hannover and Leipzig, i vol. in 8, 1895,
Hahn'sche Buchhandlung) Briefe der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte
von Orleans, vols. 6, 88, 107, 122, 132, 144, and 157 of the publications
of the Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, ed. by W. Menzel and L.
Holland, 7 vols. in 8, 1843, 1881 Schreiben des Kurfursten Karl-
Ludwig von der Pfalz, etc., i vol. in 8, No. 167 of the same series.
(Nota. The publications of the Litterarischen Vereins of Stuttgart are
not for sale). Franzosische Geschichte, vol. vi., by Leopold Ranke.
(This volume contains nothing but letters from Madame). Stuttgart,
1879, Cotta. Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation,
by L. Ranke, Berlin, 5 vols. in 8, 1842-1843, Duncker and Hum-
blot. Geschichte der Rheinischer Pfalz, by Dr. Ludwig Hausser,
Heidelberg, 2 vols. in 8, 1856 Pfalzgrdfin Elisabeth Charlotte, etc.,
pamphlet in 8, by J. Wille (Heidelberg, 1895). Leben und Char-
acter der Elisabeth Charlotte, etc., "by Schutz (Leipzig, i vol. in 18,
1820, L. Voss) Fragments de lettres originates de Madame, etc., a
S. A. S. le due Antoine-Ulric . . .et a Madame la princesse de Galles.
(Hambourg, 2 vols. in 18, 1788). National Archives Vatican
Archives Archives of Dreux.

4 Madame

who ever lived. One of her editors, the great
historian Leopold Ranke, says in his Preface: " The
incompatibility of nature which then existed
between the German and the French is nowhere
so characteristically shown as in her letters." 1
I greatly fear that the word " then " is superfluous,
even more on the German side than on ours.
Madame will perhaps help us to open our eyes
and to distinguish whether this incompatibility
signalled by Ranke is accidental and ephemeral,
or whether we must accept it as an inevitable
fact. It is useful that nations should understand
to what extent they are insupportable one to the
other.

To-day we shall tell the story of Madame's
youth, up to her marriage. In the course of the
narrative we shall note the dangers to which a
violent break with tradition exposes a civilisation.
The Reformation destroyed, throughout a great
part of Germany, the authority of the Church,
whose powerful hierarchy was the backbone of this
vast region, the political unity of which was yet
unformed. This great revolution involved a gen-
eral cataclysm of ideas and of political relations
which neither the Emperor's authority nor the
mystical principle of the Holy Empire survived.
Then came the Thirty Years' War, which devastated
immense stretches of land, and the rupture with
the past was completed; a new world had to be
created. The inevitable chaos was discernible

1 Franzosische Geschichte, vol. vi., p. in.

MADAME, MOTHER OF THE REGENT
From the portrait by Rigaud in the Chateau of Versailles

Her Family 5

in Madame's family, whose members were at sea
with regard to religion and morality; they no
longer knew what their rights might be, and what
should limit those rights. On seeing them so
adrift, so far from any sort of stability, one can
well understand what struggles Germany had
to undergo before the nation once more found it-
self; before it recovered from the sudden break
with that tradition which had been its very life
during the Middle Ages.

ELISABETH CHARLOTTE, " Countess Palatine of
the Rhine, Duchess of Bavaria" 1 and, later,
Duchess of Orleans, was daughter and grand-
daughter of electors of the Palatinate. Her grand-
father, Frederick V., was that unlucky prince, the
ephemeral King of Bavaria, who provoked the ex-
plosion of the Thirty Years' War by his foolishness
and died in exile (1632), poor and abandoned.
Her father, Carl-Ludwig, had recovered the Lower
Palatinate at the Peace of Westphalia and found
his capital, Heidelberg, a sorry ruin. The country
around was lying fallow; most of the villages had
disappeared and the population was nearly ex-
tinct; one could count on one's fingers the peasants
who had escaped the massacres, the plague, the
fearful famine; they had been driven to devour

1 These are the titles given to her in her marriage contract.
Archives Rationales, K, 542, n. 9.

6 Madame

carrion, lacking which they ate the bodies hanging
on the numerous gibbets, or, if these did not
suffice, the corpses stolen from the churchyard,
the child just expired in its mother's arms, or the
neighbour treacherously killed. Cannibalism had
been introduced with most disconcerting facility.
The German historian, Ludwig Hausser, 1 from
whom we borrow these details, speaks with horror
of the monstrous coolness, of the culinary refine-
ment with which members of the family were
served up and the children stowed away in brine.
Toward 1638, in the Palatinate, there were cook-
houses exclusively devoted to human flesh, to
fresh human meat.

In the country, the few survivors of these dread-
ful days had returned to barbarism; they lived
in huts and were a danger to wayfarers. When
in October, 1649, Carl-Ludwig returned to what
had once been the garden of Germany, a few
scattered towns alone remained. Such had been,
not three hundred years ago, the consequences
of a prolonged war between Christian nations.
The Palatinate was not the only German country
reduced to this state of misery: the whole land
had suffered so deeply that now, only, has it en-
tirely recovered. From the end of the Thirty
Years' War dates this reconstruction of all things
which caused Michelet, in 1842, to say " Germany
and France are separated by time, as Germany

1 Geschichte der Rheinischen Pfalz.

Her Family 7

is much younger than France and that the centuries
of the one do not correspond with the centuries
of the other. M * This undeniable truth was forced
upon the mind of Madame at the time of her
marriage, and she suffered from it to the end of
her life.

Not only had there been destruction, but the
very memory of the things destroyed was already
growing dim. Carl-Ludwig had left his home
as a child, and come back to it a stranger. None
of the persons whom he questioned, incredible
as it may seem, could tell him how the country
had been governed and administered in his father's
time. "All remembrance had been effaced ' r af-
firms Hausser; no one "had the slightest idea of
what had once been. " Later, when a sort of order
had been established, thanks to some recovered
documents, the darkness was dispelled. But for
these discoveries, Carl-Ludwig would never have
known what had been the revenues and expenses
of his state thirty years earlier. He would have
remained in the position of a pioneer who, without
precedents or landmarks, is forced to create all
things in a new country.

He concluded that the first step was to possess
subjects. Among other expedients to induce these
to come to him was liberty of conscience, which
he proclaimed for all in his states. Carl-Ludwig
himself was a good deal of a free thinker, in spite

1 Journal of his Voyage d'Allemagne, in Jules Michelet, by Gabriel
Monod. Paris, one vol., 1905 : Hachette.

8 Madame

of his Calvinistic education. His wandering and
precarious youth, as a needy pretender, had
taught him to look upon all questions, even those
relating to spiritual matters, from a utilitarian
point of view, and he did not consider, for the time
being, that unity of faith was necessary for the
governing of a people. He thought otherwise as
soon as his interests changed, and we shall see
him adopt a very different course, in the company
of other German princes, for whom religion was an
object of traffic; but for the moment, as he was
not yet working to reconcile the Protestant churches
with Rome, Carl-Ludwig opened widely his fron-
tiers to all beliefs. Just after the Thirty Years'
War, he undertook to persuade the reformed
Christians, Lutherans, Catholics, the schismatics of
divers denominations, to live in peace one with
another. Success rewarded this praiseworthy un-
dertaking. If perfect concord was not established,
comparative peace reigned in the Palatinate and
induced rapid repopulation. That was the main
point.

The replenishing of the exchequer was also
urgent. Carl-Ludwig had the merit, rare among
penniless princes, of understanding that the
best means of mending his fortunes was to exact
as little money as possible from his ruined sub-
jects. He made the taxes very light and managed
to live without revenues. The Elector of the
Palatinate sold his game, had his old shoes patched,
like Corneille, saw to the butter and the candles,

Her Family 9

and gave three florins to an author for his dedica-
tory poem. He was so hard up for money that,
in 1652, having to undertake an indispensable
journey, he was obliged to ask some of his towns
for an advance of fifty florins on their taxes. On
important occasions, however, Carl-Ludwig knew
how to hold his own; when he had to meet the
Emperor or go to the Reichstag, he was attended
by his court and train. On reaching home, he
hastened to dismiss all useless mouths and to
take up the beneficent parsimony which enabled
the old inhabitants to repair their houses and the
new-comers to build theirs. His perseverance and
his self-sacrifice brought forth their fruit; in less
than ten years he regenerated the Palatinate.

However, he committed the extravagance of
taking to himself a wife, and that wife was a
princess who loved neither simplicity nor economy.
It was a sorry affair for both parties. Charlotte of
Hesse-Cassel, who became Princess Palatine on
February 12, 1650, was a handsome sportswoman,
much given to the world and its pleasures. She
had a fiery temper, beat her servants, and quarrelled
with her husband. On his side, Carl-Ludwig was
jealous and tyrannical; he disapproved of hunting
and riding for women; he disapproved still more
of anything like coquetry, be it ever so innocent;
and he insisted that he was the master, so that the
quarrels originated first with one then with the
other. One of his sisters, the " dearest aunt
Sophie" of Madame's letters, saw the newly

io Madame

married pair soon after the ceremony and was
struck by the singular honeymoon of these two
eccentric lovers.

Princess Sophie was very fond of her brother,
and meant to live with him. Her Mtmoires very
quizzically relate her arrival at the home of " the
Elector and the Electress." The governor of a
frontier town had sent for her use an antique
coach "the like of which could not be imagined
by one who had not seen it" 1 and in which there
was no sort of seat. " It was drawn by two stub-
born horses that refused to move" so that the
Princess made her way on foot through the mud.
The party stopped for dinner " at a house without
any windows" and there at last, she met Carl-
Ludwig and his wife. Then all fun came to an
end. At the first opportunity, Charlotte took
her sister-in-law aside to complain of having
been forced to marry "a jealous old man." Carl-
Ludwig waited his turn to moan over the " temper
of his wife," and yet this did not prevent them
from embracing in public, in a way truly embar-
rassing to bystanders. "In spite of the faults
of which he accused her," writes Princess Sophie,
" I saw that he was passionately fond of her, and
I was often very ill at ease when I saw him kiss
her before everybody. They were continually
embracing: I have often seen her on her knees
before him and him before her." Then would sud-
denly burst a furious storm, generally occasioned

The Mtmoires of Princess Sophie are written in French.

Her Family n

by jealousy on the part of Carl-Ludwig, and the day
would pass in obstreperous warfare. After this
would come a reconciliation. Then all began anew.

A son, Prince Carl, came into the world (March
31, 1651) in the midst of this discord. He was a
gentle, sickly child. His infancy, between these
two maniacs, was very unhappy and he remained
depressed all through his life. The Princess,
destined to become Madame, was born the following
year, May 27, 1652. Elisabeth Charlotte Lise-
lotte as she was called was of a different nature.
Turbulent and sunny-tempered, she reduced her
governesses to the verge of despair by her dis-
obedience ; she was incapable of being long unhappy ;
after a flood of tears, she would burst out laughing.
With the parents Providence had bestowed upon
her, this was a fortunate disposition. Storms
passed over her head without touching her, and
Heidelberg remained in her mind, when she left
it for France, as a sort of paradise, where she had
had a fair share of those childish joys which are
so vivid and the remembrance of which is so
charming: "Great Heavens!" she writes from
Saint-Cloud in I7I7, 1 "how many times, up in the
mountain, have I eaten cherries with a big chunk
of bread, at five o'clock in the morning! I was
then gayer than I now am."

Eating cherries from the tree, in the fresh morning
air, is scarcely greediness; it is a poetical pleasure.

1 Letter of September i2th, to the Raugravine Louise, Madame's
half-sister.

12 Madame

But Madame does not conceal that little Liselotte
was fond of good things to eat. She would get
up at night to steal "goodies" in the pantry. In
truth, these were none of those unhealthy " delicate
things " such as are prized in France, "like choco-
late, coffee, or tea"; but "a good salad of cabbage
with pork," German cabbage, and that is all that
need be said, repeats Madame with delight.
"French cabbage is not to be compared with
it. German cabbage has flavour, a pec'uliar and
delicious raciness; French cabbage is watery and
tasteless."

Like most little girls, Liselotte would have liked
to be a boy. Madame, when she was nearly
seventy years of age, remembered, not without
some wicked joy, and a good deal of pride, that
by dint of naughtiness, she rid herself of her first
governess, who was old and dull. One day when
her pupil had caused her to fall on her nose and
nearly kill herself, Fraulein von Quaadt asked
permission to retire. " She declared that she could
no longer stay with me." 1

Liselotte's great joy, her joy of every day, of
every minute, a joy she was never to know at
the court of Louis XIV., was to live in a state of
perfect freedom, running to and fro, talking to
whom she pleased, noble, burgher, or peasant. It
was in this way that she had acquired that perfect
knowledge of the people and things of her birth-
place, which, in later years, she was so fond of

Letter of December 3, 1718, to the Raugravine Louise.

Her Family 13

displaying. Some months before her death, she
took up several pages of a letter to prove to her
correspondent that she still knew by heart the
town of Heidelberg, its streets, its houses, its
sign-boards, its curiosities, where the hangman
lived; where had walked the famous ghost with
its eyes of fire, whom her father, freethinker that
he was, caused to be arrested. It was thus dis-
covered that the ghost was a French student,
named Beauregard, and that other French students
were his accomplices; one of them was a future
priest, brother to Dangeau.

These reminiscences were Madame's private
treasure, from which she borrowed largely. Her
unfailing anecdotes amused her family; they might
seem childish to ordinary readers. They could be
summed up in a few lines: There lived at Heidel-
berg, somewhere about 1660, a little princess who
enjoyed with happy unconsciousness, good health
and the pleasures of her age, while her parents
vied with each other as to which should most surely
destroy their home happiness.

The mother began this goodly work. The
father ended it by a most extraordinary decision.
It could only have sprung from the disorder which,
in the midst of the seventeenth century pervaded
all German institutions, morals, and spirit. This act
of Carl-Ludwig weighed heavily on the destinies of
the two children born of an unhappy union. The
son took his troubles to heart and died young.
The daughter became a burden to her father

14 Madame

because she was clear-sighted, and this was one
of the reasons why he forced upon her a foreign
marriage, which she loathed. The singular event
now to be related is the key of Madame's whole

history.

II

" The Elector/' relates Princess Sophie, " wearied
at last of his lady wife's temper; he had coddled
her for seven consecutive years without having
succeeded in softening her." It is fair to add
that if he "coddled" her, he had spared neither
scoldings, nor scenes of jealousy, of which, in calmer
moments, he was the first to proclaim the in-
justice. The Electress was no weak victim and the
quarrels had become habitual. Charlotte, for
her part, had lost all taste for reconciliations.
Her husband had not. He insisted on being
reconciled. His wife's obstinacy in keeping him
at a respectful distance had, as its natural conse-
quence, a little romance, most commonplace in
itself; but the dramatis persona changed it into
a tragi-comedy.

Carl-Ludwig and Charlotte, at night, were not
alone in their bed-chamber. The Electress caused
one of her ladies in waiting to sleep in the room.
It seems that etiquette had so ordained, and at
Heidelberg etiquette was as strictly observed as
at Hanover, or Cassel, or any other of the obscure
principalities where a court was made up of " ser-
vants." 1 The unfortunate girl whom her duties

i General name for all court functionaries.

Germany after the Thirty Years' War 15

forced so to enter into the intimacy of her superiors
was, in 1657, fair and pretty; her name was Louise
von Degenfeld, and she belonged to an old and
noble family. The Elector took to her, for she was
gentle, which was a great rest after Charlotte's vio-
lence. In a letter both gallant and practical, he
offered her his heart and a position. Their corre-
spondence has been preserved. 1 Louise was willing
enough; but she was a pious maiden, full of moral
principles and scruples. She made it a condition
that this bargain should receive the sanction of the
" theologians. . . . Her conscience and honour,"
said she, " could not be at peace otherwise." In
vain Carl-Ludwig informed her that on no ac-
count, for political reasons, could he consent to a
divorce. Fraulein von Degenfeld, with soft obsti-
nacy, insisted on having the " permission of the
theologians."

He endeavoured to tempt her with details as
to the proposed establishment, and made out an
agreement wherein his methodical nature is re-
vealed, as well as his desire to spare his people's
pennies. Fraulein von Degenfeld was given to
understand that, not even for the fine eyes of a
mistress, were the taxes to be augmented. He
promised to endow her with two estates in the
neighbourhood of Heidelberg, and, patiently,
conscientiously, he reckoned what might be their

1 It has even been printed, without however being for sale; it
is to be found in the i6;th volume of the publications of the Societe
Litttraire of Stuttgart.

1 6 Madame

yearly revenue in money and in provisions.
Schwetzingen, to which place Madame often alludes
in her correspondence, brought in 1083 German
crowns, 69 mulds of barley, and 126 of oats;
Warsaw gave 284 crowns, 36 mulds of barley,
and 126 of oats, without taking into account other
kinds of grain, nor " the straw, wood, and other
trifles " ; nor " the four vats of wine, the ten pieces
of game, the ten pigs, and the ten roebucks" which
he would provide yearly for the housekeeping;
without counting what might result from the
improvement of the farms.

With her revenues, it was an understood thing
that Fraulein von Degenfeld should pay, clothe,
and feed "a lady in waiting, a maid, a chamber-
maid, a laundress, a steward, a page, two men
servants." On the other hand, the Elector
promised to pay, clothe, and feed the two guards,
all the coachmen, huntsmen, and footmen. He
gave a coach and six horses, but their feed would
be at Fraulein von Degenfeld's expense. All this
was "as a beginning" until the padrona (that is
the Electress) should have left the court. As
soon as she had returned to her family, which
happy event Carl-Ludwig hoped before long to
provoke, Fraulein von Degenfeld's position was
to be "bettered." He declared, byway of con-
clusion, that he was open to all observations and
amendments. The lovers were not to have the
time to discuss this agreement.

It happened that one night Charlotte woke.

LOUIS XIV.

From the portrait by Rigaud in the Chateau of Versailles
Photo. Neurdein

Germany after the Thirty Years' War 17

She saw her husband in close conversation with
her lady in waiting. A "horrible'* uproar caused
all the ladies to rush into the room, where they
found Carl-Ludwig struggling with his wife.
" The Elector," writes Princess Sophie, " had much
ado to save his mistress from her claws; she could
only catch hold of her little finger, which she bit
furiously." 1 Louise confirms the violence of the
outbreak in a letter to one of her brothers, and
declares herself astonished, hurt even, at the
readiness with which the Elect ress " believed in
evil. If the Elector had not defended me, she
would have killed me." 2 And why? Appear-
ances were against them; but who should judge
by appearances?

After this scandalous scene came others, which
added to the young girl's terror and affliction.
Her lover sent her into the country, to a place of
safety; after which, by right of his high estate
as reigning prince, in violation of all religious and
civil laws, he undertook to create for her a sort of
personal standing which should enable her to make
a good figure in the world. This proved to be
more difficult than Carl-Ludwig had anticipated;
he met with unexpected resistance. The way
in which he triumphed shows in him a conception
of sovereign power by the side of which the ideas
of his great neighbour, the King of France, seem
timid and mean.

* Memoirs, p. 57.

8 Letter of March, 1657, to the Baron Adolf von Degenfeld.

1 8 Madame

The affair was begun by an open letter 1 in
which Carl-Ludwig informed the world at large
that his ''legitimate spouse, the high and mighty
Electress, had shown herself, since their marriage
. . . singularly perverse, untractable, morose, and
disagreeable," and having been guilty toward
him of malitiosa desertione, he had taken unto
himself a second spouse, Baroness Louise von
Degenfeld, "by virtue of the jurisdiction to him
belonging, as reigning prince, in matters ecclesias-
tical and political" and that he had resolved to
spend the remainder of his life with her " conju-
gally and after a truly Christian fashion." He
gave his reasons for not divorcing the Electress, and
declared that his conscience was at peace. " Given
at Heidelberg, March 6, 1657."

This communication was ill received at Heidel-
berg, and Louise's pastor warned her that he would
refuse to give her the Sacrament. She was horror-
stricken, and Carl-Ludwig extremely angry. He
had subjected the Palatinate to the rule of the
"Churches of State," engendered in Germany
by the Reformation, the principle of which was
to recognise the reigning prince of each country
as "the supreme authority instituted by God" 2
over the clergy, and for spiritual matters, as well
as with regard to the civil officers and all temporal
affairs. The reigning princes greatly approved

1 Schreiben des Kurfursten Karl-Ludwig, p. 14.

2 Janssen, L'Allemagne et la Reforme, vol. iii., p. 24. Cf. Ranke,
Deutsche Geschichte der Reformation, vol. ii., book iv.

Germany after the Thirty Years' War 19

of this system, which gave their subjects into
their hands, body and soul. When Luther and
Melanchthon, a hundred years earlier, had invited
them to " decide," among other "matters," on
"articles of faith," 1 the reformers had evidently
not measured the danger of so extensive a power.
The princes were but too ready to meddle with
theology, and, by experience, they found it so
convenient, so advantageous to their earthly
prosperity, to unite in their person the two
sovereignties, the temporal and the spiritual,
that they hastened to change a revolutionary
measure into an institution. Towards the middle
of the seventeenth century, a "Church of State,"
understood as we have shown, had become a
most natural and ordinary thing.

The Palatinate comprised Calvinists and Lu-
therans. The spiritual yoke of the Elector weighed
on both alike, and his yoke was not a light
one. Carl-Ludwig had his own ideas as to religion,
his own way of interpreting Scripture, and he
liked to make himself heard ; he never forgot that
he was the "superior authority," whose duty it
was to watch over the right interpretation of
God's word in his state. He so took to heart this
branch of his functions as sovereign, that he made
it a point to go to church on Sunday, so as to
watch over his preachers and to scold them if
need be. Was the sermon too long, or too full of

1 Janssen, L'Allemagne et la Reforme, vol. iii., p. 24. Cf. Ranke,
Deutsche Geschichte der Reformation, vol. ii., book iv.

20 Madame

"fudge," according to his expression, the Elector
called the preacher before him after service and
rated him soundly. He was so feared that once a
minister, on seeing him, quite lost his head and
got the service all topsy-turvy.

Imagine the master's fury when one of those mere
worms dared to blame him and to excommunicate
from the Lutheran Church 1 the second wife whom,
by right of his sovereign power, he had taken
unto himself. He summoned the audacious minis-
ter into his presence, and endeavoured to correct
his ideas on polygamy: "I quoted Moses and the
Prophets," wrote he to Louise, "but evidently
he has been terrorised." This minister was
certainly a "poor creature," like all ministers,
indeed like all priests and like the pious prigs of
all religions: "O Heavens!" exclaimed Carl-
Ludwig, much discouraged, " where now can be
found honest-minded Germany!" 2

In the nick of time a book " fallen from the skies "
and which seemed to have been * ' written for them ' ' 3
reminded him of what, during the seventeenth
century, the Landgrave Philip of Hesse had done
in a similar case. Philip was not a man to adopt
half measures or to choose by-paths. Burdened
with a wife, like Carl-Ludwig, and the father of
numerous children, he conceived the bold plan of
marrying his lady love and of displaying his bigamy

1 Louise von Degenfeld belonged to the Augsburg Confession.
* Letters of July 12 and 25, 1657.
3 Letter of October 3ist.

Germany after the Thirty Years' War 21

in the face of heaven and earth. Luther and
Melanchthon had the sorry weakness to condone
the deed and it was carried out, March 4, 1540,
before a brilliant assembly where Melanchthon
showed himself. Carl-Ludwig made up his mind
to imitate this fine example, but he had not the
boldness of his model and his was but a parody
of the real thing. Two curious documents are
tokens thereof.

The first is a " declaration " 1 from that "poor
creature," the clergyman, that His Highness the
Elector and the most noble maiden Louise von
Degenfeld had exchanged in his presence, under
protest from him, it is true, vows constituting
"the bonds of matrimony." The certificate ends
with a humble prayer that the readers be not
"over rash" in condemning its author, for " God
saw that his intentions were pure." " Done at
Frankenthal, January 6, 1658."

The other document is an act signed before a
notary public, October 25, 1658, in the presence
of many witnesses, but in the absence of Fraulein
von Degenfeld, which contained a series of declara-
tions from His Highness the Elector: on the un-
governable temper of Her Highness the Electress;
on the political and social reasons which kept Carl-
Ludwig from divorcing; on the teachings to be
drawn, in such cases, from Scripture and the cus-
toms of the primitive Christian Churches; on the
moral reasons which had induced him to " associ-

1 Schreiben des Kurfursten, p. 364.

22 Madame

ate " to his fortunes Fraulein von Degenfeld and on
the written engagements which bound them one
to the other as "husband and wife/' At the end
of this act, the notary public covered his own re-
sponsibility by declaring that he had drawn up
the deed by order of His Highness the Elector. 1

After the ceremony which allayed all scruples,
an apartment was prepared in the palace for the
master's new wife. Carl-Ludwig urged on the
work. " I have already ousted X [the Electress]
from the upper story/' writes he to Louise, " and
I have given her the old bedroom downstairs." 2
In the following letter: " I should have gone to-day
to see my angel, had I not been forced to remain so
as to see that all my orders are carried out ; as soon
as my back is turned nothing is done ; I am assured,
however, that to-morrow all will be in readiness.
. . . My steward is of opinion that my treasure had
best have her own cook and a separate kitchen;
it would not cost much more, and there would be
less danger. ' ' Between the signature of the clergy-
man's certificate and the act before the notary
public, Louise's first child was born. The Elector
of the Palatinate housed his two wives and their
children under the same roof and was indifferent
to all gossip, which was rife. " It would be better,"
said he, "if the women of Heidelberg paid more
attention to their kitchens and less to court

Schreiben des Kurfursten, p. 368.

2 This letter and the following one are of the latter part of 1658.
They are not dated.

Germany after the Thirty Years' War 23

matters/' But it is impossible to impose silence
on women.

The virtue of a petty German prince who lived
more than two hundred years ago is of small
importance to us. Even in his day, outside of his
little town, it was of but little account; however,
for those who lived with him or in the shadow of
his palace, the bigamy of Carl-Ludwig singularly
complicated matters. For instance, in his corre-
spondence it is evident that he judges people
from their attitude toward Louise; whoever took
the part of Charlotte, were it even one of his own
children, became obnoxious to the amorous Elec-
tor. In this palace, where all lived together,
those who came and went, the whole court, Lise-
lotte herself, were forced on every sort of futile
occasion to decide between the legitimate wife
and the favourite. The pretence of virtue, so
dear to Carl-Ludwig, rendered the situation
particularly unsavoury. In those days many Ger-
man princely husbands were far more dissolute
than the Elector; but, at that date, none so auda-
ciously braved human and divine laws. The King
of France was left far behind as to spiritual as
well as temporal power. It is but just to say
that Louis XIV. had never set himself up as
Pontiff and if, too often, he defied the laws of
morality, at least in doing so he showed a certain
discretion; he waited for the Queen's death before
he married Lime, de Maintenon.

Little Liselotte, with all her merry uncon-

24 Madame

sciousness, was condemned to suffer from her
strange surroundings. Happily for her, Princess
Sophie took pity on her niece and delivered her
from this irregular household. She did not meet
with ingratitude. This service, an immense one,
secured for her the undying affection of Madame ;
Princess Sophie remained her confidant and
adviser, both near and from afar. The sister of
Carl-Ludwig had been marvellously prepared for
this part by her precocious experience as a penni-
less princess in search of a husband.

Ill

Sophie, Countess of the Rhine Palatinate, born
at The Hague in 1630, was the twelfth child that
Frederick V., Elector of the Palatinate and King
of Bavaria, had had of Elisabeth Stuart, daughter
of James L, King of England. Her parents after
their misfortune resided in Holland, where they
lived by expedients. Princess Sophie had never
known her father, but she had witnessed her
mother's misery, had seen her dunned by creditors
and forced to sell a jewel in order to buy a dinner.
In the midst of this penury, the fallen queen still
kept up a sort of court, where the travelling English
were made welcome and to which her passion for
pets gave a curious appearance: "The sight of
her monkeys and her dogs afforded her more
pleasure than we could give her, 7 ' 1 writes her
daughter. Under these circumstances, the chil-

1 Neuwiren, etc., p. 34.

Childhood and Early Youth 25

dren took their flight as soon as they were old
enough and struggled with life as best they could.

The eldest son was Carl-Ludwig. * His recovery
of the Palatinate was an event of good augury
for his family and promised better days. Queen
Elisabeth counted upon this; but she was quickly
undeceived. There exist * * pitiful letters ' ' in which
the mother begs for help, and icy answers in
which the son "haggles and seeks to gain time." 2
If Carl-Ludwig ended by granting to Queen
Elisabeth a pension of 6000 thalers, it was, in very
truth, because he could not do otherwise. "He
had to keep two wives, " pleads, by way of excuse,
Hausser, historian of the Palatinate.

Among the other children, Prince Rupert lived
like a hero of romance, became a pirate, acquired
great reputation as seaman, and died an English
admiral. Maurice also became a pirate and
disappeared in a shipwreck, unless he was taken
by other pirates and sold as slave at Algiers ; both
stories are extant. Edward went to France,
was converted to Catholicism, and occupied the
unenviable position of husband to the notorious
Anne de Gonzague, called the Palatine. Philip ran
away from home after having killed his mother's
paramour, began a wandering and agitated career,
and was killed still very young, in the service of

1 In reality, he was but the second son; but his elder brother
was drowned in a shipwreck; he inherited his rights and took his
place.

2 See Hausser, vol. ii., p. 613. It does not seem that this corre-
spondence was ever published.

26 Madame

France. Princess Elisabeth, Descartes's friend,
who was very beautiful and who was " acquainted
with all languages and all sciences," 1 entered the
Lutheran convent of Herford in Westphalia, with
the promise that she should one day have the
succession of the abbess. Princess Louise-
Hollandine ran away from the maternal roof,
like her brother Philip, became a Catholic,
went to France, where her conversion obtained
for her a pension from Anne of Austria and the
abbey of Maubuisson, near Pontoise, where she
led a merry life: "The Abbess of Maubuisson
. . . '," writes Madame, " had so many bastards,
that she swore by the heads of her fourteen
children." 2

Princess Sophie, by her taste for peace and a
regular life, was an exception in this family of
adventurers. Personally, she had a noble mien
and a great deal of charm. "I had," wrote she
when she was old, " brown hair that curled natu-
rally, a bright and gay aspect and a good figure
(though I am not very tall) , and the demeanour of
a princess." 3 Witty, quick to seize upon the

1 Memoiren, etc., p. 34.

2 Letter of Feb. 20, 1716. (Fragments de lettres originates de
Madame.) Cf. Saint Simon (ed. in 8), p. 88 and following, and
the notes by M. de Boislisle. The Fragments, like most such pub-
lications of the seventeenth century, should not be taken as Gospel
truth; but the adventures of Louise-Hollandine are notorious. See
the Voyage de deux jeunes Hollandais, p. 335 ; the Memoires d'Aubery
du Maurier, ed. 1754, i., 265 (note Boislisle). Saint-Simon, who
makes her out a sort of saint, only knew her when, in her old age,
she had repented.

3 Memoirs, p. 39.

Childhood and Early Youth 27

ridiculous side of things, she was yet the most
reasonable of mortals. Understanding perfectly
that she was not easy to mate, she was resigned
to find a husband passably well born, who would
not beat his wife, like a certain widower, brother to
the King of Sweden, who had been proposed to her;
or one who was less of a drunkard than a certain
Prince of Holstein who pretended to be much in
love with her: "To play the gallant, [he] drank
so deep a draught of wine that it all came up, and
he swallowed it a second time to prove his passion
for me." 1 A third prince, George-William, Duke
of Hanover, having, somewhat against his will,
asked for her hand, she accepted him. He handed
her over, without consulting her, to one of his
brothers, and again she accepted, with haughty
indifference and the firm intention of living in
peace with her husband, whoever he might be.
This proposed bridegroom allowed time to flow
on without making his appearance at Heidelberg,
so that she was still unmarried at the time of the
Degenfeld story, which gave her an extreme
desire to leave the country. Not that she was
shocked at her brother's bigamy, but the palace
was no longer habitable for a person who loved
peace and quiet.

Her patience was rewarded. She relates in her
Memoirs the arrival of her future husband, and
adds these words which reveal her whole nature:
" I was glad to find him amiable because I was

Memoirs, p. 49.

28 Madame

resolved to love him." 1 The marriage took place
October 18, 1658. The bridegroom's name was
Ernst-Augustus, duke, without dukedom, of
Brunswick-Lunebourg. He was handsome and
a pretty good match: he was coadjutor of
the Cardinal of Wartenburg, Bishop of Osna-
bruck, and destined to succeed him in his epis-
copal honours. Here some explanations are
necessary.

In the German Reformation, beside the obscure
crowds who struggled for conscience's sake, there
was the inevitable group of ambitious and grasping
men who, in a revolution, be it religious or politi-
cal, always see a means of pushing their fortunes, of
growing rich at the expense of the conquered.
Among the hundreds of princes scattered through-
out this broad land, there were many, assuredly,
who changed their faith from honest motives.
There were others, and this is equally sure, who
would never have been converted had it not been
for the tempting Church treasures with which
they might fill their coffers and provide for their
younger sons. "The church of Germany," writes
Janssen, a Catholic historian, "was the richest in
Christendom. It has been proved that it possessed
nearly the third of all the landed property." 2
The same Janssen acknowledges that the German
clergy was hated and despised for its vices. Thanks
to the universal chaos, grasping hands were
stretched toward the Church possessions, and

i Memoirs, p. 61. * Ibid.

Childhood and Early Youth 29

singular pacts were entered into by the new own-
ers and the papacy.

One then saw Protestant princes take possession
of a bishopric, enjoy its revenues, usurp its titles,
and yet live, after as before, like Protestants and
laymen. Rome, yielding to violence, abandoned
to them what they had taken, on condition that
the spiritual functions of the despoiled bishop
should be respected.

While a Protestant prince was allowed 1 to govern a
bishopric from a temporal point of view, and even to
name the minor dignitaries which it had been the bishop's
right to appoint, the Church could in no way permit him
to interfere with spiritual matters: not only this Protestant
bishop could not assume the episcopal functions such as
preaching, ordination, confirmation , but he

could under no circumstances control the parish priests
as to their manner of preaching or of accomplishing
the other duties of their position. . . . As to what
is termed spiritual administration, pastoral ministry,
these functions devolve on vicar-generals, Catholics, and
priests, named by the Chapter and to whom the mock
bishop abandoned a little, as little as possible, of his
revenues.

Ernst-Augustus owed to a clause of the Treaty
of Westphalia the prospect of some day figuring
among these pseudo-prelates. In the course of
the arduous negotiations which had preceded the
treaty, the house of Brunswick "in order to facili-
tate peace had given up the co-possession of Bremen

1 L'Allemagne & la fin du moyen-dge, vol. i., p. 575.

30 Madame

and three other cities under ecclesiastical rule." 1
By way of compensation, Osnabruck was granted;
but the princes of that house " being all heretics, " 2
whereas the population was Catholic, while the
Chapter of the cathedral was half Catholic and half
Protestant, an expedient was found which was
supposed to satisfy all parties. This expedient
was deemed pernicious by Rome; it might also
be called burlesque. It was ordained that Osna-
bruck should, by turns, have a " Catholic bishop
and a heretic," this latter being always chosen
in the house of Brunswick. This arrangement
lasted until the nineteenth century: it was in 1803
that the last of the Protestant bishops, the Duke of
York, uncle to Queen Victoria, put an end to this
peculiar state of things by yielding up Osnabruck
to Hanover.

While he awaited the death of the Cardinal of
Wartenburg, Ernst-Augustus resided with his
brother, Duke Georg-Wilhelm, sovereign of Han-
over. To this court, he took his young wife. An
active correspondence sprang up between the
latter and Carl-Ludwig; from the beginning,
Liselotte was often mentioned. More than
ever, matters at Heidelberg were at sixes and

* What follows is borrowed from a long despatch, May 7, 1678,
addressed by Cardinal Alderano Cibo, Secretary of State to Pope
Innocent XI., to Francesco Buonviso, Archbishop of Thessaly
and Nuncio to Vienna. Archives of the Vatican, tome 198, Nun-
ziatura di Germania.

2 That depends on the date. One of Ernst- Augustus's brothers
became a Catholic.

Childhood and Early Youth 31

sevens. 1 The Electress Charlotte absolutely re-
fused to return to her family. Exasperated and
miserable she still insisted on remaining at her post,
dreaming of some impossible reconciliation; she
was narrowly watched by her husband, who, not
without reason, thought her capable, during her
fits of fury, of any violence. By a cruel derision,
the unhappy woman continued to hold her rank
of legitimate spouse and sovereign. With Carl-
Ludwig, she presided at the court receptions,
where they both, being equally incapable of self-
control, gave themselves in spectacle to the
public. It is reported that one day, at a feast given
in honour of a princely guest, the Elector by way
of reply to a biting jest gave the Electress so
violent a box on the ear that nose-bleeding ensued 2 ;
and if this should be a mere legend, perhaps it is
one of those cases where legends are truer than
history.

Liselotte took her mother's part and looked
sourly upon the intruder. Her father, greatly
irritated, soon detached himself from her. Long
after the death of Carl-Ludwig, Madame gave vent
to this melancholy complaint: "I certainly think
that my father loved me; but I loved him much

1 See Books of Reference, p. 3, note 2. This correspondence
lasted, uninterrupted, until the death of Carl-Ludwig in 1680.

2 The story of the blow is found for the first time in La vie et les
amours de Charles-Louis, Electeur Palatin (Cologne, 1692). It
appears again in a German adaptation of the French book. Freytag
accepted it in his Bildern aus der Deutschen Vergangenheit. Dr.
Adolf Kocher, editor of the Electress Sophie's Memoirs, refuses to
admit it. Hausser (vol. ii., p. 610) declares it "doubtful."

32 Madame

more than he did me." * It was the truth. The
hostile feelings betrayed by little Liselotte toward
Fraulein von Degenfeld had incensed her father,
and for ever, as will be seerr. Not that Carl-
Ludwig experienced for his mistress one of those
violent passions, comparable to nature's forces,
which, if they do not justify, at least explain
matters; Carl-Ludwig was not of the stuff of
which great lovers are made. His case was
worse. He loved Louise von Degenfeld with the
ardour of a very sensual man, already well on in
years, for a young creature, entirely subjugated by
him. Charlotte, accustomed to his stinginess,
warned him that children are a costly luxury
and advised him not to have too many. Louise,
without a complaint or a remonstrance, had
fourteen in quick succession; she died at the
birth of the fourteenth, and was immediately suc-
ceeded by a "robust Swiss girl," in spite of
the Elector's sixty-odd years and unsavoury
infirmities.

In all this, it is quite useless to look for poetry.
But, if he entertained no very exalted passion for his
mistress, Carl-Ludwig, as we have seen, nourished
lofty ideas of his omnipotence, both temporal and
spiritual. Convinced that his will was law, in
morals, in religion, as well as in taxes, he accused
his daughter of "not behaving toward him as she
should/' 2 He made the new governess, Fraulein

Letter of Sept. 7, 1710, to the Electress Sophie.

2 The Duchess Sophie to Carl-Ludwig, letter of March 27, 1659.

Childhood and Early Youth 33

von Uffeln, 1 responsible for this. It is true that
this lady had bravely refused her " approbation" 2
to the official bigamy. He was about to provoke
a new scandal by sending her away, when Duchess
Sophie 3 persuaded him to confide "her dear
Liselotte" to her care; "I shall watch over her as
though she were my child . " 4 The affair concluded ,
she hastened its execution. " Hanover, May 15,
1659. ... If you kindly consent to prepare [the
journey] of Liselotte at once, my carriages will
await her at Munden, whatever day it will please
you to order the carts necessary for her baggage,
and to send her there." We know by a letter
from Carl-Ludwig to Fraulein von Degenfeld that
the departure took place June gth: "I left to-day
at 4 o'clock, and Liselotte an hour earlier. Her
sorrow was quickly appeased. After having wept
copiously with X [her mother the Electress
Charlotte], as soon as her back was turned, Lise-
lotte asked for her lemons."

After a visit at Cassel, in her mother's family,
the child, with Fraulein von Uffeln, took the road
to Hanover, and her aunt found her there one day
on reaching home:

July 20, 1659. I was welcomed by my dear Liselotte,

1 Or von Offeln; the two versions are used. Married later to Herr
von Harling. Some of Madame's most interesting letters are
addressed to her.

2 Duchess Sophie to Carl-Ludwig, letter of March 6, 1659.

3 She had become Duchess of Hanover by her marriage.

4 Letter of April 18, 1659, to Carl-Ludwig. The Elector and his
sister wrote to each other in French.

3

34 Madame

who wore as serious a look as though she had been twenty
years of age, and she seems to me so different from her
mother, that I find no fault with her, except that she weeps
too easily, which is not to be wondered at as it is the
fashion at Cassel, where she has been, as doubtless she has
told you. I have just written to Charlotte about her
arrival; it remains to be seen whether the answer will
be honey or wormwood; I add that if she goes to Cas-
sel, she can see her daughter here. . . . As to a good
governess, it is difficult to find one anywhere; if I find a
better one than hers, I shall let you know; meanwhile,
. . . Herr von Madra has been named tutor.

It does not appear that the Electress Charlotte
made any use of the permission to see her daughter
at Hanover. She was scarcely encouraged to do
so. She wrote to Liselotte, while the child was
still at Cassel, a first letter, full of tenderness,
" to show her that her poor Mamma ever thought
of her.'* 1 Liselotte had answered, and for this
her mother had thanked her, July 4th, by a letter
in which are found these words: " May God keep
you and let you wax in years and grace, so that,
some day, you may console me for the harm
that has been done to me by tearing you from me."
I do not know whether the child ever read these
imprudent lines; at any rate, the correspondence
ceased. The Electress Charlotte wrote to Frau von
Harling: " Heidelberg, January 15, 1663. I can-
not understand why we, unfortunate, should be

This letter and the following have been taken from the Intro-
duction written by Dr. Bodemann to the letters of Madame to
Herr and Frau von Harling (pp. viii. and ix.).

Childhood and Early Youth 35

entirely forgotten by you all; I especially cannot
forgive Liselotte, who has not answered my last
two letters, and acts as though I were dead;
God will punish her." To the same, March 3d:
" Write me a word to tell me if Liselotte is living
or dead. I know absolutely nothing of her, and
in spite of her ingratitude toward me, my mother's
heart yet clings to her."

It was after this hard and cruel fashion that
the Electress Charlotte was for ever banished from
her daughter's life. They met again ; but Madame,
even when she was married and protected by
distance, always showed by her attitude that she
had been taught to regard her mother with terror.

IV

The four years spent with Duchess Sophie were,
for Liselotte, years of perfect happiness. At Han-
over, she found a loving welcome, a life easy and
pleasant, if not over-refined, and an education of
which she said in later years that all there was of
good in her came from her Hanoverian aunt and
Fraulein von Uffeln. This education was not
without its flaws; but anything was better
than the school of pharisaism of her father's
palace.

The court of Hanover was not a school of virtue,
much less of refinement. The worship of nature
was most sedulously and unblushingly practised.
The reigning Duke, Georg-Wilhelm, and all his

36 Madame

brothers 1 loved women and good cheer and de-
prived themselves of neither. Their mistresses
were legion. Ernst-Augustus, in honour of his
honeymoon, interrupted the series, and the young
wife hastened to make the best use of her time,
knowing full well that it would not last . "I have , ' '
said she, "accomplished that miracle of our age,
that of loving my husband." 2 Two months
after her marriage, she gave Carl-Ludwig a
singular picture of her days, adding: " I no longer
read fine books . . . the beautiful precepts of
Seneca and Epictetus are vanquished by those
of nature." 3 Seneca and Epictetus had given
way to Rabelais. One day when her brother had
written of his troubles, Duchess Sophie answers:
" I am greatly troubled to see that you take things
so much to heart. . . We have but one life; why
torment ourselves when we can eat, sleep, and
drink, sleep, drink, and eat?" 4 She practised
what she preached. The day came when she
noticed that her husband greatly desired to be
unfaithful to her; she cheerfully smoothed all
things for him and was not wroth. We read in
her Memoirs: " The holy bonds of matrimony

1 There were four. Their history, in consequence of complicated
family arrangements, is somewhat confused. They were Christ ian-
Ludwig, Duke of Hanover from 1641 to 1648, later, Duke of Celle
up to his death (1665); Georg-Wilhelm, Duke of Hanover from
1648 to 1665, then of Celle, died in 1705; Johann-Frederick, Duke
of Hanover from 1665 to 1679; Ernst-Augustus, who succeeded
Johann-Frederick, and died in 1698.

2 Letter to Carl-Ludwig, Feb. 6, 1659.

3 December 16, 1658. * June 6, 1663.

Childhood and Early Youth 37

had not modified his gallant humour; he wearied
of sameness." 1 Then she mentions their mutual
conventions.

The passion of love is of all time. It is not so
with that of gluttony, and it is difficult for us
to imagine the place of honour given to it in the
pleasures of the high and mighty during the seven-
teenth century. When Duchess Sophie writes
to her brother, " Good cheer is now one of my
greatest pleasures," 2 she by no means alludes to
delicate cheer, but to copious meals. In Hanover
as well as in the palace of the Louvre, people made
themselves ill with overeating ; the only difference
was in the cooking of the viands, and cooking
is a thing of personal appreciation quite as much
as the choice of colours. Eleanor of Olbreuse 3
relates that "she was nauseated" at the sight of
the huge dishes of sausages with red cabbage, or
of onions crushed with ginger, which delighted
Duchess Sophie. Madame says as much of the
stews served at the table of Louis XIV. Propor-
tionally, the number of dishes was as extravagant
here as there and the table expenses as excessive.
The budget of Johann-Frederick, successor of
Georg-Wilhelm, for 1678-1679 still exists. Here
are some of the items 4 :

i Memoirs, p. 17. 2 Letter of July 7, 1671.

3 Eleanor of Olbreuse, who belonged to a noble Poitou family,
was beautiful, witty, and virtuous. Georg-Wilhelm took her as
his morganatic wife in September, 1665. (Cf. The Love of an Un-
crowned Queen, by W. H. Wilkins, London, 1900, 2 vols. in 8.)

4 Die Hofhaltung zu Hannover, etc., by Dr. Eduard Wehse (Ham-
burg, 1853).

38 Madame

Wardrobe of His Serene Highness . . 1010 thalers
Wedding and christening presents ... 54 "

Church collections 16 "

Chancellor's palace and Supreme Court

(of Justice) 625 "

Opera 3972 "

Army 26,475 "

Table expenses 49*365 "

In this last stun are not comprised wine and
beer, or the renewing of the service, or the indemni-
ties to the servants not fed in the house, or the
wages of the cooks and their assistants, or those
of the hunters and gardeners who provided game
and vegetables. Not counting these, the table ex-
penses yet swallowed up a sixth of the Hanoverian
resources under Johann-Frederick.

Duchess Sophie, who had seen Carl-Ludwig
husbanding the kindling wood, and weighing
the sugar, accused her brothers-in-law of wan-
ton waste. She pretended that Georg-Wil-
helm paid his " quisignier" (cuisinier) more than
a state minister and, besides, allowed him to
rob shamefully. The idea of being cheated was
very distasteful to her; she said, "It is foolish
to give ten crowns for a calf when it can be bought
for one." 1 Not more foolish than to buy ten
calves when a single one would suffice; but this
idea would have appeared singularly "bourgeois."
A feast was princely only when it was worthy of
Gargantua.

1 Letter of May 14, 1670.

Childhood and Early Youth 39

The Hanoverian court, however, to her seemed
very commonplace. The Duchess, when she asked
for Liselotte, warned her brother of this: ''She
will scarcely here learn to be coquettish and
familiar; and I do not answer that she will acquire
any facility of conversation with different sorts of
people, unless God grant us some day a court of
our own; here, there is but little majesty, and
months pass when we see none [but] servants/' 1
The same complaint often reappears under her
pen: "We live like burghers, and see no one, so
to speak." 2 And elsewhere: " I lead but a solitary
life, and by way of society, I have my servants." 3
It was an understood thing: with her, fine manners
could scarcely be acquired, still less choice lan-
guage, or delicacy of mind; but in all this, the
surroundings alone were not in fault. The first
culprit was Duchess Sophie herself, that really
superior woman, whom Leibniz always called
"our great Electress," of whom Madame wrote
with enthusiasm: "My aunt was not only the
light of her court, but of all courts. Where else
could have been found such intelligence and
such virtue?" 4 All her intelligence and all her
virtue did not preserve her from a degree of coarse-
ness which is amazing in a "great princess."
She delighted in nasty words, disgusting jokes, and

1 Letter of April 18, 1659. Servant was a word used with regard
to all persons, even of noble birth, attached to princely houses.

2 December i, 1670.

s Letter of Duchess Sophie, June 17, 1665.

Letter of Madame to the Raugravine Louise, March 18, 1703.

40 Madame

obscenities, as did Madame herself, her worthy
pupil in such matters. It was in the blood. Carl-
Ludwig, one day, thought himself very witty,
when he commissioned his daughter then not
sixteen years of age to put an obscene question
to Duchess Sophie. The child gave the message,
received the answer, and her aunt thought it all
a very good joke. 1

All the decencies of life were equally ignored at
the Hanoverian court. Scarcely settled in her new
home, the Duchess, following her husband's
example, took occasion of divine service to write
letters. Neither one nor the other had the slightest
religious faith; but their presence at worship was
an affair of etiquette and they contrived to make
the duty as light as possible. When they were
virtuously inclined, they carried on their corre-
spondence; at other times, their occupations were
less quiet. July 21, 1660, Duchess Sophie was
forced to interrupt her letter on account of the
noise: "We are in church, and my good lord is
making such a stir reading a comedy aloud, that
I am unable to continue." It might be interesting
to know what the congregation, where there were
people of great piety, thought of these libertine
Highnesses who were supposed to assist at the
service for the edification of their subjects.

Liselotte, as it happened, had great need to be
taught decorum. 2 This her aunt, though much

1 Letter of May 14, 1670.

2 For all that follows, cf. the letters of August 24, 1659, March

Childhood and Early Youth 41

given to admire her in all things, acknowledged:
" Liselotte is as clever as might be a person of
twenty, and can behave so prettily that one can but
admire ; but she has to be reminded to behave well
every moment, otherwise there is the rod; for, after
all, she is very young." The Duchess advised trav-
elling for her: "Thus, my dear Liselotte . . .would
see something of the world and learn to live as
becomes a princess." However, a first venture, a
visit to the Hague at the house of the grandmother
surrounded by her monkeys and her dogs,
proved a failure: "Here, no one has the least
notion of conversation; it is not a climate
suited to the cultivation of the mind, but only
to benefit one's health, in which respect these
people are more intelligent than Germans; one
can also learn to keep a house and furniture
clean."

A second journey, the object of which was once
more to see Heidelberg, "that Parnassus where
science and reason flourish," left the Duchess
rather unsatisfactory reminiscences. She found
herself at her brother's palace between the Elec-
tress Charlotte and Fraulein von Degenfeld, and
this did not seem to her more agreeable than of
yore: " I visited the former," relate the Memoirs,
" and [the Elector] requested me to see the latter,
which greatly troubled me. I feared that by
doing so, I should be supposed to approve." She

28, 1663 (erroneously dated 1660), July 24, 1660, February 2,
1660, addressed to the Elector Carl-Ludwig.

42 Madame

ended by yielding, thinking that this one visit
would suffice, but she had not reckoned upon the
tenacity of Carl- Lud wig: " I, however, refused a
greater intimacy, fearing that the Electress might
be angered, and that, perhaps, the Duke * might
not be pleased."

Other travels were given up for various reasons.
And thus it came to pass that Princess Liselotte,
born rough and noisy, had by no means become
polished before she went to France. A hundred
years later Rousseau would have hailed in her a
creature of nature, and would have praised her for
being untainted by civilisation. But, so many
years before Rousseau's appearance, it was a
little distressing.

She received the education of the day: that is,
as little as possible. Two or three centuries
ago, it seems as though the ignorance of woman-
kind in general extended to princesses. The
Palatinate rulers had never quite forgiven the eru-
dition of the beautiful Elisabeth, the friend of
Descartes. For so great a lady, this erudition
was out of place. " Her great learning made her
rather absent-minded, and often excited our
laughter." 2 It was more important for a princess
to sweep her curtseys correctly than to have an
opinion on the Discours de la Methode. Carl-Lud-
wig, consulted as to his daughter's education, said :
4 'As to study, I do not suppose that you want

1 Duke Ernst-Augustus, her husband.

2 Memoirs of the Electress Sophie.

Childhood and Early Youth 43

to make a blue-stocking of her." * And all agreed
that learning was a matter of small importance.

At seven years of age, Liselotte was taught "to
read and write in German, her prayers, and the
catechism (a very important item)/* Her rank
obliged her to know French. She spoke it all
her life with an accent which is betrayed by her
spelling: Louisse, a Jessuitte, appropation; but
her letters in French are easy and natural, and,
after all, she made fewer mistakes than the Grande
Mademoiselle, or certain duchesses of the French
court. She took lessons in Italian, others, of no
matter what, with a "poet who had a very good
German handwriting, " and she had a tutor.
All this, without method, in the midst of journey-
ings; yet, in spite of all, with incontestable success,
thanks especially to her aunt. We have shown the
evil side of Duchess Sophie as educator; it is but
fair to show the good. She was extremely clever,
and cleverness is always useful. For her day, she
had read a great deal, and she loved all beautiful
things. " I have often heard my late Papa,"
wrote Madame (July 21, 1697) "say that no one
possessed Michel de Montaigne as did Your Grace. "
She inspired her niece with the love of good books.
Madame, thanks to her, took at once to our great
writers, and when she arrived at Saint-Germain,
in spite of her peasant look, soon knew their best

1 The text reads "make of her a Schurmann" Anna-Maria von
Schurmann was a learned German woman. For this part, cf. the
letters to Carl-Ludwig of August 24, 1659, April 18, 1660, October
31, 1661.

44 Madame

works by heart. An education which bears such
fruits is no failure.

Two very happy years had passed. Toward the
end of 1 66 1, Ernst-Augustus exchanged his pre-
carious position of penniless younger son for the
fat living which, thanks to the Treaty of West-
phalia, fell to his lot: "The Duke received the
news that the Bishop of Osnabriick had . . . gone
to a better world, . . . and he caused all things
to be prepared for taking solemnly possession of
his bishopric. It was thought that I might seem
[an] encumbrance in this ecclesiastical ceremony/* 1
The new Bishop and his " Bishopess " enquired
eagerly as to the Osnabriick revenues. " I think,"
wrote the Duchess to her brother, " that we shall
not be too badly off, though the average income of
the bishopric is but 18,000 or 20,000 crowns a year,
for the late incumbent had more than 40,000 crowns
over and above this, and I think some arrange-
ment will be agreed upon, so that we shall not,
like him, have to shear all things too closely."

Ernst-Augustus's congregation came gallantly
to the front, and it was in the happiest possible
state of mind that Duchess Sophie took possession
of the country seat of the Osnabriick Bishops:

Iburg, September 29, 1662. Three days ago I arrived
here from Celle and I find myself in a very pretty house
which charmed me when I first saw it; everything that
strikes the sight is magnificent: plate, furniture, liveries,

i Memoirs, p. 70. Letters of Dec. 12, 1661, Feb. 13 and 26,
1662.

Childhood and Early Youth 45

guards, pikemen. . . The burghers of Osnabriick harangued
me and presented me with a silver basin and ewer, with a
big tankard and two silver mugs for my children. All
these things are but trifles compared with the seventy
thousand thalers the bishopric gave its Bishop on his
arrival. . . . Everything is going to wear a different as-
pect from Hanover, thank God. . . .

The naive joy which fills this letter will help
us to understand an obscure and secret under-
taking of Carl-Ludwig at this period. He had
begun a campaign, the object of which was neither
more nor less than the destruction of the Refor-
mation, and the uniting of the Protestant Church
to the Catholic. This, it is needless to say, was the
result of no conscientious scruples, for he did not
believe in any dogma ; nor of his tenderness for the
Catholic clergy, which he judged as he did all the
others. One of his favourite axioms was " that the
world would never be cured until it had been
cleansed of three sorts of vermin: priests, doctors,
and lawyers." 1 It is highly improbable that he was
actuated by political motives; Protestant princes
found too many advantages in the doctrine
of the State Churches. But there remained
the money question, the exhaustless resources
of the Roman Church for the disposing of princely
bastards otherwise than by the army. Without
asserting anything, this seems a plausible ex-
planation of the interest Carl-Ludwig evinced
in the reunion of the two churches: he hoped

i Letter of Madame, December 14, 1719, to Heir von Hailing.

46 Madame

thereby to further the fortunes of Louise von
Degenf eld's children.

The first letters which mention this project
are from Duchess Sophie *: "June 19, 1661. . . .
I made our Bishop believe that you had read the
volume of sermons he gave me, and that you
greatly admired his moderation ; he asked me
whether you still pursued your project of uniting
the two religions." Another prince had had
the same inspiration, or had made the same
calculations, almost at the same moment as the
Elector: "[Hanover, October 31, 1661.] . . . You
must know . . . that the Landgrave of Cassel has
written a long diplomatic letter to Duke Georg-
Wilhelm, a most pious letter, on the subject of
uniting the two religions, and asks his advice, as a
Christian. He began by sending it to his coun-
sellors; I do not know if anything has come of it."
Years of silence followed this communication.

In 1667, it is easy to guess that the project
had made no progress, as Carl-Ludwig placed under
a Protestant patronage a foundation on the model
of the Catholic institutions, and which under
other circumstances need not have been disguised.
By way of parenthesis, this was for the advantage,
very positively and openly, of a daughter of Louise
von Degenf eld. Near Heidelberg were the ruins
of a convent for noble maidens, founded during the
Middle Ages by a Hohenstaufen. Carl-Ludwig

1 The letters of Carl-Ludwig prior to 1674 are no longer in existence.
He had ordered his sister to burn them.

MADAME, YOUTHFUL PORTRAIT
From print in Bibliotheque Nationale

Childhood and Early Youth 47

undertook to restore it, with the idea of securing an
honourable retreat for his illegitimate daughters,
but his way of doing this proved the general con-
fusion of his mind. He filled the new convent with
Calvinists, and gave them a rule borrowed from
a Catholic order and embracing among other vows
"that of celibacy." 1 This made an absurd
medley. There was dissonance between the rule
and the ruled. The vow of celibacy seemed
inadmissible to Protestants; it had to be sup-
pressed. The same thing happened when mascu-
line visits were prohibited. Then came other
objections until, finally, the convent disappeared
during a period of troubles and catastrophes.

We shall again stumble upon this project of
union between the churches. For the time being
events of another kind recall us to the Heidelberg
palace.

The situation had changed at a time when change
was no longer looked for. In the spring of 1663,
the Electress Charlotte, worn out by the struggle,
decided to return to her own country, and Carl-
Ludwig in consequence called back Liselotte. For
the last two years he had wished her to return.
He mistrusted the Hanoverian court as far as
" gravity" and decorum went, and his sister,
when he lectured her on that head, could but
humbly acknowledge that her court could not
be compared with that of Heidelberg, a model
of order and regularity in comparison. One

1 Cf. HSusser, Geschichte der Rheinischen Pfalz, ii., 646 seq.

48 Madame

day, when she spoke of the sorrow her niece's
departure would cause her, Duchess Sophie added :

I shall feel it greatly but I confess that she could be
better brought up in a well regulated court like yours,
than in this one, where one lives in mediocrity, without
ever seeing anybody. . . Hers is a very good nature and
she learns anything she wishes. I think you will object
to nothing in her except her grimaces ; she will scarcely be
cured of these until she has sense enough to see in her
mirror how ugly they are. 1

This is the first time that Liselotte's grimaces are
alluded to.

Three months later: " February 26, 1662. . . .
I acknowledge that your reasons for claiming the
Electoral Princess are quite convincing, for the
Infanta of the Palatinate can certainly learn more
dignity of manner in her own home than with me
in Westphalia, where we are all very simple."

But another year passed. Liselotte's return was
constantly postponed, on account of her mother's
presence in the palace. As soon as the departure
of the Electress was assured that return was hastily
ordered. June 5, 1663, Carl-Ludwig wrote to
Fraulein von Degenfeld that an apartment must
be in readiness for his daughter. On the i4th, he
confides to her his first impressions: "She has
rather gained than lost." Fraulein von Uffeln,
the governess, who did not approve of bigamy,
was sent away and her post given to Frau von
Terlon, who trembled before Carl-Ludwig. All

December i, 1661.

Childhood and Early Youth 49

will go well if "his angel" shows some tact. And
he lectures her:

[Same day] I do not exactly know when the Electress
means to leave. . . . Now that, through her departure,
the danger will be lessened and liberty increased, my
treasure must, according to my idea, watch even more
carefully over her expression and her gestures, and so
temper them that they may show neither too much haughti-
ness nor too much familiarity. With my tastes and from
my experience, the first defect would be less disagreeable
to me than the second.

The Electress Charlotte left and never returned.
Carl-Ludwig imagined more than ever that all,
now, would go smoothly, but this was an illusion.
Was it Louise's fault? Was it Liselotte's? Or,
more simply, that of the situation itself? One
thing only is certain: Duchess Sophie expected to
be complimented on her pupil: she heard nothing
but complaints.

Princess Liselotte was a young girl who had
personal ideas and a will of her own ; that was what
her father could not pardon. When he compared
her with her brother, the Electoral Prince, whom
he had brought up after his own fashion, the
difference was startling. It was impossible, even
for the most suspicious, to object to Prince Carl,
a poor, timid, awkward boy, who to all observers
(save his father, who saw in him a certain like-

50 Madame

ness to himself) seemed little better than a fool.
Duchess Sophie wrote to her brother, not without
irony, when her nephew was not yet nine years
old: "Hanover, May 6, 1660. . . . I am charmed
to hear that you approve so entirely of Carl and that
he is of one mind with you, and since he does not
love his mother, there seems no reason why his
submissive humour should be corrupted."

At seventeen, Carl seemed to have inherited
the paternal avarice. Duchess Sophie writes,
February 23, 1667:

I am happy that you should be convinced that it will be
no scatter-brain, but a wise youth whom you will associate
to your projects, and that the Electoral Prince begins to
resemble you in all things . . . but I regret that Liselotte is
not fortunate enough equally to please you; her nature
seemed to me a good one ; I hope she will not change.

The brother and sister had been equally well
trained to economy. When the Elector put his
son to school, he obtained a reduction of the usual
price on the plea that the child had a small appetite.
When he sent his daughter to Hanover, he only
allowed her 900 florins a year as pocket money,
despite all the obligations attached to her rank,
so as to accustom her to give small tips and to
invent cheap presents. This training Madame
never forgot.

As for manners and appearance Prince Carl
made one think of Thomas Diaforus, 1 and this

1 A character in Moliere's Malade imaginaire.

Childhood and Early Youth 51

piece of good fortune he owed to his father. For
his day, Carl- Lud wig was well educated. He
was fond of books and bought them. He counted
among the German princes who hired Frenchmen
of letters, as in olden times the Romans bought
Greek slaves, so as to enjoy the luxury of intellect-
ual conversations. He never understood that the
education of a pedant was scarcely fit for a prince;
he gave his son very learned masters for the classics,
and they made of him a good Latin scholar and a
passable theologian, but a Thomas Diaforus as to
appearance. As ill-luck would have it, the gov-
ernor whose duty it was to give him a little dash
and boldness took it upon himself to complete
the work of the other masters. In 1667, Duchess
Sophie, knowing that there was some project
of marriage for her nephew, thought it her duty
to write to Carl-Ludwig:

September i. Signac 1 . . . told me that when he had
the honour of painting the Prince Electoral's portrait
the Prince absent-mindedly passed his hand in his hair,
whereupon his governor, Herr Watte ville, to show his
authority, hit him over the fingers with a comb, and that
the Prince, blushing, dared not protest; others tell me
that when, at times, for some ailment, he makes use of
candle grease, the governor also hits him on the fingers
and never speaks to him without uselessly finding fault;
that the Prince often says that he does not know when
he is right or wrong, because the governor is eternally

1 There was in the seventeenth century a Frenchman by that
name, a "painter on enamel," who visited the court of Christina of
Sweden and painted her portrait. Is it the same ? I have been
unable to fix that point.

52 Madame

scolding him, and that is why he is so timid. I feel it my
duty to tell you this for it seems to me that a prince ad-
mitted to the Council, and soon to be married, is no longer
of age to be thus treated. ... I have heard much good of
the Prince and at Stuttgart many found him very intelligent
when his governor was not by , but as soon as the governor
is present, he dares not open his mouth.

The unfortunate youth felt himself ridiculous
and degraded, but had not the courage to rebel.
He said later: "I carry with me the stigma of
oppression. My young days were poisoned and
I have known but little happiness in this life."

The princess chosen to be his wife was called
Wilhelmina-Ernestine and was the daughter of
Frederick III., King of Denmark. She had been
chosen because she was too insignificant and
indifferent not to live on "good terms " with
Fraulein von Degenfeld, and at the court of Heidel-
berg all things turned on that point. More than
ever, the stubborn Carl-Ludwig, a veritable mono-
maniac on the subject of bigamy, insisted that
his mistress should be treated as " second spouse,"
and this was very difficult to obtain; there were
no precedents, so that he himself had to regulate
every detail. What should be, at the family
table, the "second spouse's" place? Should she
come before the legitimate children or after
them? Should she sit next her sisters-in-law,
should there be any present, or two places off? 1

i Cf. the letter of Carl-Ludwig to Fr&ulein von Degenfeld, dated
April 23, 1664.

Childhood and Early Youth 53

In a plan of the table which still exists, the
Elector occupied the head. He had placed the
Electoral Prince at his right hand, the Electoral
Princess on the left. Fraulein von Degenfeld
and her eldest son came after Liselotte. The
other places were assigned to the court digni-
taries, according to their offices and rank.

Strangers, even when they showed great pru-
dence, were suspected by His Highness of the
Palatinate of insinuating covert blame in all their
speeches, and at times he was not wrong. More
than one among the German princes envied Carl-
Ludwig and would fain have imitated him; but
Germany, as a nation, in spite of the barbarism
and coarseness which resulted from the Thirty
Years' War, had kept, in the midst of all its
miseries, those honest and serious principles which
have proved its great mainstay through the lapse
of centuries. Not that it was a prudish nation,
for it was admitted that princes had a right to
numberless favourites; but it was indignant at the
comedy of lawfulness in the case of Carl-Ludwig;
indignant also at his odious oppression of the
clergy. It revolted against the vagaries of this
singular reformer of manners, and manifested its
firm intention of renewing ancient traditions and
of falling once more into the rut of the old-time
morality. l

The volume entitled Schreiben des Kurfursten, etc., contains many
precious indications as to public opinion in Germany at the time we
are studying. From this point of view it would be well to read all
the correspondence of Carl-Ludwig with Fraulein von Degenfeld

54 Madame

Liselotte headed the opposition. This was so
spontaneous on her part, so unconscious, that
it took her thirty or forty years to understand
that her father had been angry with her, and she
could never make out his reasons for being so.
Brought up with the young Raugraves this was
the title given by the Elector to Fraulein von
Degenfeld and her children, 1 she had grown to
be very fond of these poor little innocents, for
whom the future was menacing; but their mother
always found her most reserved. The Raugravine
Louise was full of step-motherly attentions, but
these remained always unheeded by Her Highness
the haughty and distant Electoral Princess. Proofs
of this abound in the numerous letters sent by
courier from Carl-Ludwig to "his treasure" when-
ever they happened to be separated. "You do
not say whether Liselotte behaves well to you
and to the children. . . . All that my darling
treasure decides with regard to Liselotte will
be looked upon by me as a favour." With re-
gard to a sailing party: "I trust that Betten-
dorf delivered my message and executed my orders
which were that Liselotte should take my treasure
in her boat." 2 It is clear from the construction of
the phrase that Liselotte would not have invited
the Raugravine without a positive order. Duchess

and the letter addressed to Carl-Ludwig by Christopher von Ham-
merstein, November 16, 1669, p. 384.

'The act was signed December 31, 1670.

2 Letters to Fraulein von Degenfeld of September 17, 1665,
August 23, 1668, and April 24, 1664.

Childhood and Early Youth 55

Sophie, anxious about the future, was looking high
and low for a husband for her niece, and, mean-
while, she tried to soften matters: "As to Lise-
lotte, I am sorry you should not be satisfied with
her bringing up. . . . Liselotte's nature is excellent,
reason only comes with time, and the Danish
princess will get along better with the Signora
[Fraulein von Degenfeld], being less positive, and
in no way active or given to conversation, which is
excellent in every particular." 1

This last letter is dated 1670. Liselotte was
then eighteen. She was short, "as dry as a
chip/' 2 startlingly plain, but in no way common-
place or dull. Her eyes were very small, her big
nose all on one side; she had large, flat, hanging
cheeks; but she was fresh and fair like many
Germans; illuminating this fantastic appearance,
there was so much life, such sparkling gaiety
that with her there was no such thing as dulness.
Her good humour was her safeguard: "I have,
all through my life, made fun of my uncomeliness,"
she wrote toward the end of her life, "I only
laughed at it. His Grace, our father, and our
late brother often told me that I was ugly; I
merely laughed and did not make myself unhappy
about it. My brother called me badger-nosed,
which I took as a good joke." 3 In reality she
was not as indifferent to her appearance as she

* Letters from July 20, 1666, to September 24, 1670.
2 July 14, 1702, addressed to Raugravine Louise, half-sister to
Madame.

' Letter addressed to the Raugravine Louise, June 22, 1719.

56 Madame

chose to pretend, since she avoided seeing herself
in a mirror and shrank from being looked at:
"I have always considered myself as so ugly,
even when I was young, that I did not like to be
seen and that I never desired any sort of ornament,
for jewels and finery attract notice/' 1 One can
scarcely ask a woman to rejoice at being ugly.
Liselotte was resigned to her fate; and that was a
good deal.

The conviction that she could never know a
woman's triumphs helped to make her unfeminine
in her tastes and ideas. She could not understand
why one should wish to be married: "When
a woman/' said she, "gets it into her head that
she wants a husband, it is mere folly. To be
crippled is a misfortune, to have a husband is
another," no matter who the husband may be,
for the best "is but a sorry bargain." The worst
of all follies is to marry for love: "It is a miracle
when a love match succeeds; it is very rare. . . .
Generally love turns to hatred. " 2 On this subject
the seventeenth century was clearly and almost uni-
versally of Liselotte's opinion. A German proverb,
more forcible than elegant, justifies public opinion
in these words: "Love is like the dew; it falls as
well on a cow's dung as on a roseleaf." To marry
for love is to risk founding a family on "dung,"
and what sensible person would run such a risk?

1 Quoted by Schutz, p. 53, in Leben und Character der Elisabeth-
Charlotte.

* Letters to the Raugraves, March 8, 1715, September 4, 1697,
July 15, 1719, May 10, 1713, February 16, 1702.

Childhood and Early Youth 57

And, as it happened, an example of the evils
love causes when it is ill placed was under the
eyes of Liselotte. In the case of Fraulein von
Degenfeld, the dew had fallen on the stones of
the wayside. The young Princess saw her father,
at more than fifty, as much inflamed as ever for
a woman who certainly was submissive and de-
voted, who wrote that she adored him, but who
nevertheless met his advances with irritating
coldness. Fraulein von Degenfeld was not of
an inflammable nature. Duchess Sophie speaks
of her coldness like an authority on such matters,
and her brother bemoans it in a curious memoir
written after the death of his companion 1 and
entitled by him Bilan de mariage. Louise, to
her honour be it said, was no more grasping than
she was passionate, and she kept aloof from all
court intrigues. One is almost led to believe that
she became the mistress of this old tyrant for the
glory of it, because he was a reigning prince,
and that the long patience of this poor creature
was a miracle of monarchical sentiment. However
that may be, the miracle did not bestow happiness
upon her, and the Elector himself was only happy
to a certain degree, or rather after a certain
fashion.

Carl-Ludwig, very thin, with his long, cross-
grained face and his suspicious glances, was not
made to inspire passion. He was born a constable,
and that character is never very reassuring. He

*Schreiben des Kurfursten, etc., p. 305.

58 Madame

watched for the arrival of his ''chancellor's" sub-
ordinates and noted those who were late. He was
careful to have every bottle taken from his cellar
marked down, and he verified those that remained.
He kept up with all the most insignificant acts of the
"Raugravine" and often scolded her. One would
be singularly out of one's reckoning if one took
literally the expressions of the correspondence,
where he familiarly speaks of his " angel" and his
" treasure," of their home affairs, the people she
had seen, the health of the children, and the
small presents he made to their mother: sweets,
a cure for the toothache, two melons, with the
advice not to eat too freely of them at one time,
an old fur garment which he could no longer wear
but which might perhaps be made over for "the
children." It is necessary to compare this very
commonplace but affectionate correspondence with
Louise's pathetic letters in answer to some which
we do not possess and which doubtless have been
destroyed, in which she declared herself the most
unhappy of creatures, where "on her knees"
she implores pardon for having desired some in-
nocent pleasure, or for not having been able to
prevent visits from her relatives, or for some crime
equally heinous.

Liselotte heard the echoes of these despairing
cries. Her father's example preached to her the
failure of wedlock, regular or irregular, love match
or arranged union, and she was but too willing to
profit by the lesson. ' ' I should have been so glad , ' '

Childhood and Early Youth 59

she writes in her old age, "if I had been allowed
not to marry and to lead a good life of celibacy."
She liked to repeat that she had been married
against her will: " If I had been my own mistress,
I should have done like you, my dear Louise, and
never have married . " But she was not her own mis-
tress. "Papa carried me on his shoulders like a
burden, trembled lest I should be an old maid, and
rid himself of me as soon as he could.'* She had
also to reckon with her Aunt Sophie, who wished
to see her niece far from Heidelberg and its com-
plications, and who by ill luck could not find out
whether Providence was for or against her plans :
"Marriage/' she writes, "is like death: the day
and the hour of it are marked; no one escapes.
As our Lord God wills it, so it comes to pass." 1
Several matrimonial projects fell to the ground;
perhaps because God had other views. Liselotte
had no peace on that subject.

She thought that nothing makes up for the loss
of liberty, whereas liberty makes up for all things,
even for a Fraulein von Degenfeld. Her liberty
enabled her to take long walks, for "pleasures"
were rare at Heidelberg. There were visits to
country fairs, and representations of strolling
actors. A sleighing party, all the guests being
masked, was the winter's event. Another year,
Liselotte's letters 2 are full of a masked ball where

1 Letters to the Raugraves of December 28, 1719, June 20, 1720,
October 15, 1701, April 16, 1699.

2 Cf. the letters to Frau von Harling, born von Uffeln, her former
governess, p. 5 and following.

60 Madame

she represented Aurora, and her brother Mercury.
That sufficed to make her consider Heidelberg
as an earthly paradise. Carl-Ludwig accused her
of frivolity; he would have liked her to take her
part of "princess" more to heart; but she was in
all things his daughter and was not to be bullied like
her brother. She had managed, in spite of all, to
be happy, under the yoke of her father and in
his irregular surroundings, when the very thing
she most dreaded came to pass. It pleased "our
Lord God" to give her a prince, of whom she had
never thought, and who was already married, so
that it was first necessary to cause the death of a
young princess, the darling of the French court,
in order that the decree from on high might be
executed. When men make it their business to
decipher the divine will they at once stumble upon
monstrous iniquities. By way of excuse it must
be said that Madame never made any pretence of
logic; she would certainly have shrunk from the
consequences of her fatalism had she understood
them.

CHAPTER II

MARRIAGE FIRST YEARS IN FRANCE

AT the time when Princess Liselotte became
Duchesse d' Orleans and sister-in-law to the
King of France, Louis XIV. 's reign was in all its
splendour. Foremost in Europe by its influence,
France was likewise in the first rank, thanks to a
civilisation of which we now see especially the
faults, whereas the dazzled contemporaries only
saw its magnificence and originality. The forces of
the nation had been brought into cohesion by the
impulse of absolute monarchy, and France gave
forth all the effort of which it was capable, until
the day came when the same system, exhausting
all sources of life, put the nation at death's door.
No sign of the inevitable decadence, however, was
visible in 1671, the date of Monsieur's second mar-
riage. The new Madame was to be welcomed in her
adopted country by a sumptuous and polite society,
several centuries in advance of her native land the
unfortunate Palatinate, relegated by untold miser-
ies to the lowest degree of civilisation. She might
have been pleased by the contrast, won over and
charmed by the magnificence of the French
court, by the delight of an unrivalled literature,
as well as by the art of exquisite conversation,
which held in reserve many joys for a fresh and

61

62 Madame

keen spirit. It might have been, also, that so
independent a little person, accustomed to ex-
treme simplicity, and naturally refractory to all
refinement, would have felt ill at ease and as
rebellious as Voltaire's Savage, in consequence
of the constraints and conventionalities without
which polite society could not exist. It will be
seen that the impression of Madame savoured
both of the one state of mind and of the other,
without speaking of unforeseen events, and that,
all told, Princess Liselotte managed much better
in her new existence than has been supposed by
her country people.

Monsieur, Due d' Orleans, * and younger brother
of Louis XIV., lost his first wife, Henrietta of
England, June 30, 1670, at three in the morning.
The King heard of it at six and gave the whole
morning to weeping and regrets, for he was
tenderly attached to his young sister-in-law. The
afternoon of the same day, he proposed that his
cousin the Grande Mademoiselle should take the
place of the defunct princess, whereat no one was
astonished; this haste, in the case of a royal
widower, being no uncommon occurrence. Made-
moiselle replied evasively; Lauzun then occupied

Philippe of France, Due d'Anjou, and later Due d'Orle"ans,
born September 21, 1640, married April i, 1661, to Henrietta-Anne
of England, daughter of Charles I. and, through her mother, grand-
daughter of Henri IV.

PHILIPPE, DUG D'ORLEANS
From print in Bibliotheque Nationale

Marriage 63

her heart. The King, not a whit discouraged,
spoke to his brother on the following day, and the
Duke received the suggestion "very agreeably," 1
but showed some repugnance at this unseemly
haste. To tell the truth, the favourites who ruled
Monsieur hesitated to permit this marriage, on
account of the resolute nature of the Grande
Mademoiselle. She was not a woman to allow
herself to be led, and there was not the slight-
est hope of obtaining from her even a small
portion of her millions. What then would be
the use? Amidst all this ill-will, the matter
dragged.

In embarrassing cases, there was a person, among
others, who had some influence over Monsieur;
this was one of Liselotte's numerous aunts, the one
called "la Palatine," 2 who lived in Paris, where,
during the Fronde, she had played an important
part. In France, among subtle connoisseurs such
as Retz, she was looked upon as a woman who
possessed a sort of political genius. In Germany,
in her husband's family, opinions were divided;
her brother-in-law, Carl-Ludwig, Liselotte's father,
greatly prized her counsels and made use of her
in all his Paris negotiations; her sister-in-law,
Sophie, Duchess of Hanover, reproached her with
lack of frankness and with being "fertile in

1 Memoires de Mile, de Montpensier, iv., 153. For the Biblio-
graphy see Chapter I.

2 Anne de Gonzague de Cleves (1616-1684), married in 1645
to Eduard, Prince of the Palatinate and brother of Carl-Ludwig;
widow in 1663.

64 Madame

f ancles. "* In spite of these divergences, both
were on excellent terms with her, and these con-
tinued after the widowhood of Anne de Gonzague,
in 1663. Indeed, she was making a round of
visits to her German relations when she heard of
the death of Henrietta. She had just left Heidel-
berg and was going through Frankfort, when
the news burst upon her, causing much emotion on
account of rumours of foul play.

Anne de Gonzague's correspondence with Carl-
Ludwig 2 proves that the idea immediately came
to her to give Monsieur as second wife " the Elec-
toral Princess/' otherwise, Liselotte. Even in the
first letter after the death of Madame, she dis-
creetly feels her way: "Frankfort, July 12, 1670.
As I reached this town, I heard of the death
of the Duchesse d'Orteans, brought on in three
hours by a colic. This unfortunate accident will
cause many changes in several ways. ... I own
that this death greatly affects me, and being what
I am to Monsieur, I should have wished to be in
France at the time of this strange misfortune/*
Then follow protestations of affection, and the
offer to return to Heidelberg on her way to Han-
over, in order to take "the orders'* of the Elector
"on all matters. "

We do not possess the answer; but we can guess

Letter to Carl-Ludwig, September 1667.

2 Publicationen aus den K. Preussischen Stoats Archiven, T. xxvi-
Leipzig, i vol. in 8 : Hirzel. The correspondence of Carl-Ludwig
with his sister-in-law Anne is placed at the end of the volume,
after the letters to Duchess Sophie of Hanover. It is formed

Marriage 65

by the following letter that Carl-Ludwig was in no
way ill-pleased:

Salmunster, July 14, 1670. . . . I humbly thank you, Sir,
for the kindness with which you sympathise with my sorrow.
I have received two letters from Monsieur, who is much
afflicted by his loss. Those who dare to say that he had
a hand in it must be very abominable people; they little
know the heart of this prince, who is quite incapable of
so horrible an act. Those who think that Monsieur would
be a very desirable match, already write to me on the
subject, which is somewhat premature. ... I shall do all
I can to have the honour of seeing you on my way back ;
two days would not be a great delay, and we might, perhaps,
under existing circumstances, find plenty of things to
discuss which would profitably fill them.

Here occurs a break of two months in the corre-
spondence; probably the letters have been lost.
Those which we possess, dated about the beginning
of October, show the Palatine to be in Paris
once more. She had seen Monsieur, had suggested
good ideas to him, and sums up the situation
in these words: "I shall merely tell you that the
King wishes for a marriage with Mile. d'Orleans,
but that Monsieur will not accept it.'* Carl-
Ludwig fancied that all was up and answered:
" October 2ist. . . . As to the marriage of Monsieur
with the Electoral Princess, it must not be thought
of, since the King has decided otherwise." The
Palatine, however, was persevering. Her self-pride

merely of fragments relating to the marriage of Liselotte. The
correspondence is in French.

66 Madame

as a political woman was at stake, for the pro-
viding of a brilliant match for a poor niece was
not her only aim, considering the situation of
Germany with regard to France. Liselotte sister-
in-law to Louis XIV. meant an all-powerful pro-
tector for the Palatinate; it meant that the German
earthen pot would be saved from a shock with its
neighbour, the French iron pot. The Palatine was
not the only one to understand this, and there was
no time to lose.

If ever Germany well-nigh submitted to the
French sway, it was not after Jena, it was during
the glorious days of Louis XIV., when a clever
diplomacy had given us as pensioners numbers of
starving German princes, beggars since the Thirty
Years' War, and abandoned to their misery, or
nearly so, by their natural protector, Emperor
Leopold: "The Emperor [is] of small resource,"
wrote Duchess Sophie, whose husband and brother-
in-law were at the devotion of France. " It seems
to me that his orders . . . are but of small account
in the Empire/' 1 And it was quite true that
Leopold was but a poor creature without influence.
" I fear," again said the Duchess, " that the money
[that of His Most Christian Majesty] may some
day place all Germany in his power; as for me, I
greatly desire German independence." She saw
clearly; Germany's very independence was at
stake. Together with the princes, France bought

Duchess Sophie to Carl-Ludwig, letters of June 17, 1665, and
May 30, 1667.

Marriage 67

up their ministers and their counsellors, the fem-
inine court influences, the fencing master of their
sons and the dancing master of their daughters;
hence a concert of servile praise which added to
the value of official treaties. 1 "Louis," declares
Ranke, 2 "possessed in the German Empire an
influence which, at least in the Eastern circles, was
equal, if not superior, to the Emperor's author-
ity." On the following page Ranke admitted that,
even in the heart of Germany, Louis was obeyed.
In 1664, the city of Erfurt having refused to
accept an imperial decree, the King of France
forced its obedience, doubtless for the principle.
A little body of French soldiers crossed the
frontier, peaceably traversed half of Germany,
and executed its mission with the help of the
Elector of Saxony, whose duty it was to defend
Erfurt, but who had been terrorised by this
exhibition of our influence.

While each one, in Germany, sought to shield
himself, Carl-Ludwig managed to be on bad
terms with everybody. Avowedly, he was op-
posed to the encroachments of France. "I am
an Elector and a German prince," would he proudly
say, "and I mean to depend only on God and
on the Emperor." But the truth was that he

1 In 1658 a defensive alliance was concluded by France with the
ecclesiastical Electors, the Palatine Elector, Bavaria, the Houses
of Brunswick and Hesse, etc. It was the League of the
Rhine.

2 Franzosiscke Geschichte, etc., vol. iv., pp. 322 and 323 of the
French translation by J. J. Porchat.

68 Madame

accepted our subsidies * in 1658, at the time of the
Rhine League, because it was beyond his power
to refuse money; so that he pocketed and snarled
at the same time. Hausser affirms that he did
not long receive "the salary of Judas. " It was
easy, nevertheless, to foresee that such things
would come to a bad end; that, between the buyer
of consciences who was bent on having his money's
worth and the bought who would try to cheat,
the good understanding would crumble away at the
first menace of an European war; and that Carl-
Ludwig, on bad terms with the Emperor, who
was at his wit's end, on bad terms with his neigh-
bours, and with whom he quarrelled about money
affairs, would find himself in a critical position.
He was himself aware of this and greatly wished
that his sister-in-law's scheme might succeed;
this marriage would serve as a lightning conductor
in case of misunderstanding with France.

Nearly a year elapsed before, one after the other,
Monsieur, his minions, who rejected the idea
of a " penniless princess," and also King Louis
XIV. could be persuaded. At last, August 7,
1671, the Palatine wrote: " This time, sir, the
marriage of Liselotte with the Due d'Orlans is
an accomplished fact, if you desire it. Monsieur
wishes for it, and the King of France has given
his full consent. . . . The only obstacle is that of
religion." A Duchesse d' Orleans could only be

1 Three thousand thalers a month. Cf. Hausser, Geschichte der
Rheinischen Pfalz, ii., 616.

x 1

CO P

I 5

U

.s

3 bo
< .S

Marriage 69

a Catholic, and Carl-Ludwig did not dare to
approve of his daughter's conversion; he feared
the anger of his people, for whom hatred of Rome
was the beginning of piety. The Palatine sug-
gested an expedient. It was agreed between them
that Liselotte should secretly abjure, and that her
father should pretend to be surprised and angry
when the thing should be discovered. The young
Princess accepted this comedy.

Of her feelings during these long negotiations,
we know but little. She did not conceal that
she was being disposed of against her will. "It
is true," she wrote long after, "that I came to
France out of pure obedience to His Grace, my
father, and to my uncle and aunt of Hanover ; for
it was certainly not for my pleasure." * She ac-
knowledged also that her bitter regret at leaving her
dear Germany added greatly to this repugnance.
Was some uneasiness mixed with her disinclination?
Was she aware of what was said of Monsieur and
what did she think on the subject ? No one knows.
On the other hand, it is certain that her change of
religion left her somewhat indifferent. Her father
had been careful that she should only have "a
vague and lukewarm" religious instruction, such
as could prove no hindrance, and she was accus-
tomed to look upon a conversion as a matter of
business. There is a letter of hers where she
expresses astonishment that a certain Duke of
Brunswick should have become a Catholic, for

J Letter of November 9, 1719, to the Raugravine Louise.

Marriage 69

a Catholic, and Carl-Ludwig did not dare to
approve of his daughter's conversion; he feared
the anger of his people, for whom hatred of Rome
was the beginning of piety. The Palatine sug-
gested an expedient. It was agreed between them
that Liselotte should secretly abjure, and that her
father should pretend to be surprised and angry
when the thing should be discovered. The young
Princess accepted this comedy.

Of her feelings during these long negotiations,
we know but little. She did not conceal that
she was being disposed of against her will. "It
is true," she wrote long after, "that I came to
France out of pure obedience to His Grace, my
father, and to my uncle and aunt of Hanover; for
it was certainly not for my pleasure." 1 She ac-
knowledged also that her bitter regret at leaving her
dear Germany added greatly to this repugnance.
Was some uneasiness mixed with her disinclination ?
Was she aware of what was said of Monsieur and
what did she think on the subject ? No one knows.
On the other hand, it is certain that her change of
religion left her somewhat indifferent. Her father
had been careful that she should only have "a
vague and lukewarm" religious instruction, such
as could prove no hindrance, and she was accus-
tomed to look upon a conversion as a matter of
business. There is a letter of hers where she
expresses astonishment that a certain Duke of
Brunswick should have become a Catholic, for

1 Letter of November 9, 1719, to the Raugravine Louise.

70 Madame

says she with ingenuousness, "it did not bring
him in a penny/' 1 When her father spoke to
her of her possible conversion, she feared the
judgments of the world if she "changed her
religion merely to get a husband/' 2 and she did
not even enquire what she would be forced to
believe as a Catholic. A means of satisfying
the world having been furnished her, she asked
for nothing more.

Carl-Ludwig had in his service one of those
Frenchmen, hucksters of witty sayings, such as
German princes attached to their court in order
to have some one with whom to converse. He
was called Urbain Chevreau 3 and came from Han-
over, where he had sojourned five years. Duchess
Sophie had recommended him to her brother as
being very quick-witted and to be had cheap:
500 crowns, board and lodging, and the keep
of a valet. With it all, singularly ill-favoured:
"As to your seraglio, he would make no havoc
there with his charms, for he is uglier than Esop."
He was " learned " and made of "solid stuff."
" He has the pretension of being well up in
medals and paintings; he has written a short
history of twelve emperors, in which he has
put everything that all other authors together
had said. I have not seen it, but he himself

1 Letter of April 3, 1710, to the Raugravine.

2 Carl-Ludwig to the Palatine, July 31, 1671.

3 Urbain Chevreau, born at Loudun in 1613, died in 1701; he
spent a part of his life going from court to court. He wrote many
works, all of which are forgotten.

Marriage 71

greatly admires his work." 1 To crown all, he
was not pious; his, was a very open mind. On this
recommendation, Carl- Lud wig had taken Chev-
reau, and it was to him that he entrusted the task
of converting, with the greatest mystery, the
future Duchesse d'Orlans: "To this end," re-
lates Chevreau, 2 " I devoted eighteen or twenty
days, four hours a day, without awakening any
suspicions. And when the Electoral Princess had
no further doubts or scruples to submit to me,
I wrote to France to the Palatine Princess and sent
her a copy of the abjuration." Liselotte had al-
lowed, free thinker that she was, her Protestantism
to be whisked away by sleight of hand : the label
was of small importance, since beneath it there
was nothing.

II

Having rid herself of this one serious stumbling
block, Anne de Gonzague urged her brother-in-law
to complete the contract. It had been drawn
up in Paris according to that of the first Madame,
but the amount of the bride's dowry was left
in blank, and Carl-Ludwig was stubborn in his
refusal to name the sum, hoping to gain something
by delay. In vain the Palatine assured him that
Monsieur would accept whatever was proposed;
she could only get from him the following words,

1 Letters to Carl-Ludwig, February 18, 1671, and November 5,
2670.

2 Chevrceana.

72 Madame

which would certainly have broken any marriage
had the respective fathers, thus discussing matters,
been ordinary mortals: " October 19, 1671. . . .
As I have not been asked the quantum of the dowry,
which is but small, and that the sum must be
known, I have not deemed it necessary to mention
it." Monsieur was quite aware of the reputation
for avarice of his future father-in-law, and did not
expect to receive a penny of his wife's dowry.
He accepted the situation and in the contract
we read: "In favour of the aforesaid marriage,
the said Lord Prince Palatine Elector has consti-
tuted a dowry and given to the Lady Princess, his
daughter, a like sum to that which the princesses
of the Palatinate House are accustomed to receive
and . . . which will be given partly in money, partly
in rings, etc., of which an inventory and esti-
mate value shall be made." 1 The " inventory and
estimate value" exist. 2 Liselotte took with her
to France the value of 10,400 livres in jewels,
knick-knacks, table and toilet objects in gold
and silver. Even for a German princess, this was
modest.

Then followed the renunciation of the "Lady
Princess" to "all rights of succession on all sover-
eign or feudal possessions paternal or maternal,
situated in Germany, reserving to herself only her
rights on possessions of the same nature situated
out of Germany, and the freeholds of her House. "

1 Archives Nationales, K. 542, No. 9.
d., No. 10.

Marriage 73

France was one day, on these last words, to base
her claims upon fragments of the Palatinate.

The remainder of the contract followed "the
customs "of Paris, with one important exception,
however: "Said Lord and Lady, future consorts,
shall enjoy community of all goods, furniture, and
acquisitions, realty which shall be purchased by
them during the time of said marriage ... it being
however stipulated that the personal property be-
longing at the present time to the Due d' Orleans
should remain his own." The fortune in question
was one of no ordinary importance. According
to M. de Boislisle, 1 the "possessions" of Monsieur
at the time of his second marriage consisted in an
appanage bringing in 100,000 livres, of a pension
from the King of 560,000 livres and of a "supple-
ment" of 100,000 livres; that is in all of a revenue
of 760,000 livres which was soon to be increased by
a new appanage of 200,000 livres (Patent Letters
of April 24, 1672). For a Princess Liselotte, whose
dowry amounted to a few thousand florins, 2
Monsieur was what the world calls a fine match.

Then came the wedding presents and allowance.
Monsieur gave "jewels, rings, and precious stones
to the amount of 150,000 livres." The allowance
of Madame was of 40,000 livres a year, "beside . . .
the castle of Montargis, furnished as befits her

1 Cf. the Memoires de Saint-Simon, ed. in 8, viii., 357, Notes
i and 2. Monsieur, besides, owned the Palais-Royal, Saint-Cloud,
and several other estates.

232,000 florins of Germany were equal to 64,000 livres. The
receipt is at the Archives Nationaks, K. 542, No. 14.

74 Madame

quality, for habitation and dwelling during her
lifetime." This last clause was to prove to her in
coming years a source of much heart-burning.
Finally, should Monsieur die first, his widow
was to be allowed three months wherein to
renounce her rights to the common possessions.

When Madame, much later, became aware of our
customs, she complained bitterly of her contract,
because it did not mark the difference between
an Electoral princess and a shop-girl of the Rue
Saint-Denis: "My marriage contract," wrote she
to her sister Louise, 1 "was drawn up as miserably
as if I had been the daughter of a burgher; I
cannot understand that the Elector should have
made me sign it." That the same laws should be
applied to Madame and to Madame's tradespeople,
was almost insulting. Thus, to certain eyes, we
already showed signs of being a democratic and
revolutionary country.

For the time being, Liselotte knew nothing of
business and had other things to think about. In
France, there was a desire to come to an understand-
ing "as soon as possible," and the Palatine wrote 2
that she would be at Strasburg on the 28th of
October in order to receive the future Madame from
her father's hands. Her letter then mentioned the
trousseau question : " Some gowns and some linen
have been hastily made up; it was necessary to
have a white robe for the wedding day." Then

1 Letter of December 10, 1701.

2 Letter to Carl-Ludwig of October 10, 1671.

Marriage 75

came the question of the travelling "room." It
is well known that during the seventeenth century
nobles carried with them furniture, which was
unpacked on arriving at the night's halt and packed
again in the morning; a precaution which greatly
lengthened journeys. The Palatine wrote on this
subject: "I take the liberty to tell you that the
Princess will only need a little bed and some
tapestries as far as Metz, for there we shall find
the complete furniture of two rooms for the rest
of the journey." She added: "A magnificent
apartment is being prepared for Madame at the
Palais-Royal and her household is already or-
ganised. ... In one word she will find everything
ready and magnificent, and, with God's grace, she
will surely be happy."

On the receipt of this letter, Carl-Ludwig set out
to conduct his daughter to Strasburg. Among the
members of his family who formed the bride-
elect's escort was a young boy of thirteen, the
Raugrave Carl-Lutz, l the eldest son of Louise von
Degenfeld. On this occasion, the Elector had
not lost sight of his bastards' interest. Since Lise-
lotte was going to be rich and influential at the
court of a great king, he looked to her to protect
the poor creatures on whom the country looked
coldly on account of their father's bigamy, and
he wished them to be known in France. Alone
of all the German relatives, who did not go further

1 His name was really Carl-Ludwig. But he was called Carl-
Lutz to distinguish him from his father.

76 Madame

than Strasburg, Carl-Lutz was appointed to ac-
company his sister to Metz, where the Marechal
du Plessis-Praslin was to espouse Liselotte in
the name of Monsieur.

The Palatine was at the meeting place. She
had not come alone. "She brought with her,"
relates Chevreau, who was of the party, " Father
Jourdan, a Jesuit, to see that nothing was wanting
to the new conversion. But things were in so good
a state that he found nothing left for him to do. " 1
Chevreau had every right to feel proud: the teach-
ing of religion had not been supposed to be of
his competence.

The farewells began. Carl-Ludwig exacted from
Liselotte the promise that she would faithfully
love the children of Louise von Degenfeld 2 and
placed her in the carriage with her aunt. She
left, bathed in tears. We read in her first letter
to her Aunt Sophie: "Frau von Wartenburg
told the truth. ... I cried so hard that my side
is swollen ; from Strasburg to CMlons, I did nothing
but howl all night." She was never to forget
the horror of that journey toward the unknown and
toward wedlock. Twenty-five years later, she still
spoke of it: "Since my arrival in France, I eat
three times less than before. I think it is the result
of the terrible sorrow I felt at Strasburg on
leaving Your 'Dilection,' Papa and my lost
brother; for I was fully eight days, and even

1 Chevr&ana.

2 Letter of April 14, 1718, to the Raugravine Louise.

Marriage 77

more, without being able to eat or drink without
effort." *

While she was making herself ill with sobs and
cries, her father had turned his face homeward
in the merriest of moods. He was glad to be rid
of his daughter and well pleased with her fine
marriage: "I hope," wrote he to the Palatine,
while still on the road, " that she will ere this have
dried her eyes, and will observe the precepts of the
Psalmist: Obliviscere populum tuum et domum
patris tui" He confessed his terror of "acci-
dents" which might up to the last moment com-
promise matters, and he added: "The more
I think of this affair you have managed, the
more glorious for you and important for our
House do I find it; that House must eternally be
under obligations to you, and I in particular am
grateful." 2

For once, this naturally suspicious man was
guilty of optimism. The marriage of Liselotte
was to be the cause of nothing but misfortune
to the Palatinate, and that through the fault
of Carl-Ludwig. At the time when his daughter
became sister-in-law to Louis XIV., a German
prince could not at the same time have as patron
and protector the Emperor as well as the King
of France. A choice ought to have been made,
and that choice Carl-Ludwig could not find in him
to make.

1 Letters of February 5, 1672, and February 24, 1695.

2 November 4, 1671.

78 Madame

ill

The household of the future Duchesse d'Orleans
awaited her at Metz. This household, together
with the great personages who had gone to meet
her, formed a Parisian audience to witness the lit-
tle political and religious comedy made up by her
father and her aunt. In France, it was supposed
that the Electoral Princess would have to be
instructed in the Catholic religion. When it was
known, on November i3th, at Metz, that the Pala-
tine had brought a converted neophyte who had al-
ready abjured her errors, unknown to her father,
there was nothing to be done but to publish the
fact. The official abjuration took place on
the 14th 1 :

Something was read to me [relates Madame] and I was
to answer yes or no, which I did absolutely according to
my own idea. I said no twice when I was expected to say
yes; but I had my way, at which I laughed to myself.
I had so loudly protested against the damnation of my
relatives that nothing was said on that score before me.
I listened with attention, and answered at my will. . . .
This kind of show does not take place without much
beating of the heart. 2

Chevreau had written after the ceremony to
Carl-Ludwig: "All things went off agreeably and

1 According to the Nuncio (Archives of the Vatican, Nunziatura
di Francia, vol. 145, despatch of November 20, 1671). The act
of abjuration is dated the isth (Archives Nationales, K. 542,
No. 15).

2 Letter of May 22, 1707, to the Electress Sophie.

Marriage 79

easily." The official account was less exact and
more edifying; the Pope's Nuncio to Paris thought
himself justified in writing: "Madame seems an
excellent princess; it has been said that while
abjuring, she gave signs of the liveliest satisfac-
tion." 1 The Palatinate learned the news through
a letter from Liselotte to her father, the terms
of which had been agreed upon beforehand:

My lord, I doubt not that the profession I have just made
of the Roman Catholic religion will greatly surprise Your
Electoral Highness; if I did not before leaving dare to con-
fess this design, I humbly beg Your Highness to believe
that fe