7 August 1699

From the Complete Correspondence of Madame, the Duchess of Orléans

On this day, Madame writes from Marly to her half-sister the Raugravine Louise in Germany:

“I have returned from Maubuisson, where I went to see my aunt, the Abbess. Thanks be to God, I found her in good health. She is more vivacious and sees and hears better than I even though she is 30 years my senior. She was 77 on 11 April. She leads a hard but quiet life; she never eats meat unless she is gravely ill, she sleeps on a mattress as hard as rock, there is nothing in her room but a straw chair, and she gets up at midnight to pray. 

Getting drunk is a very common thing among women in France and Mme de Mazarin left a daughter, the Marquise de Richelieu, who in that regard acquits herself to perfection.”

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Commentary:

Madame’s elderly aunt, née Louise-Hollandine of the Palatinate, is one of her late father’s numerous sisters. An intellectual, artistic girl, she stood little chance of finding a suitable match for lack of a dowry in the days before her brother was restored to the Palatinate after years in exile in the Netherlands. Like one of her other brothers, she fled to France and converted to Catholicism. Her reward from Louis XIV was to be appointed to the abbey of Maubuisson, of which she is now the 27th abbess since its foundation in the 13th century.

Pictured: A view of one of the surviving buildings at Maubuisson. It now houses a contemporary art centre. Credit — Par (c) CDVO Catherine Brossais — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=126218256

Madame’s snide bit of gossip about the late Mme de Mazarin’s daughter was presumably prompted by the duchess’s death on 2 July.

Pictured: Hortense Mancini (1646-1699), Duchesse de Mazarin, as painted in 1671 by Kneller. 

Mme de Mazarin, née Hortense Mancini, was a niece of Cardinal Mazarin and perhaps the only woman to be the lover of both Louis XIV and Charles II. Unhappily married, she left her husband in 1668 and spent the subsequent decades in exile in Italy and England. She died in London, where she was living on a pension from William III.

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The translation from the French is my own, as it always is unless I credit someone else.

If you have questions that I have not addressed in the commentary, please ask in the comments.

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