Note 126 — Chapter XIX · “L’ÉTAT, C’EST MOI” (continued 2)

Monseigneur played late in the salon. On withdrawing to his own apartments he went up to the princesses (the duchesses de Chartres and de Bourbon) and found them smoking with pipes which they had sent for from the Swiss guardhouse. Monseigneur made them stop this diversion, but the smoke betrayed them. Next morning the king administered a rough rebuke.i

The duchess de la Ferté assembled her purveyors at her house and played a kind of lansquenet with them. She whispered in my ear, “I cheat them but they rob me.” Mémoires of Madame de Staal.o