Note 5 — Chapter LVIII · STATE OF EUROPE WITH REGARD TO MARRIAGE
Cecil N. Sidney Woolf translation
Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter, December 23rd, 1671: "I don't know if you have heard that Villarceaux, when talking to the king of a post for his son, adroitly took the occasion to tell him, that there were people busy telling his niece (Mademoiselle de Rouxel) that his Majesty had designs on her; that if it were so, he begged his Majesty to make use of him; said that the affair would be better in his hands than in others, and that he would discharge it with success. The King began to laugh and said: 'Villarceaux, we are too old, you and I, to attack young ladies of fifteen.' And like a gallant man, he laughed at him and told the ladies what he had said." See Memoirs of Lauzun, Bezenval, Madame d'Épinay, etc., etc, I beg my readers not to condemn me altogether without re-reading these Memoirs.