Marie Antoinette | Page 9

and that the officers of my chamber do not find you good enough to eat with them. Perhaps you are hungry; for my part I awoke with a very good appetite this morning: sit down at this table. Serve up my 'in case' for the night there.' The King, then cutting up his fowl, and ordering Moliere to sit down, helped him to a wing, at the same time taking one for himself, and ordered the persons entitled to familiar entrance, that is to say the most distinguished and favourite people at Court, to be admitted. 'You see me,' said the King to them, 'engaged in entertaining Moliere, whom my valets de chambre do not consider sufficiently good company for them.' From that time Moliere never had occasion to appear at the valets' table; the whole Court was forward enough to send him invitations.
"M. de Lafosse used also to relate that a brigade-major of the Body Guard, being ordered to place the company in the little theatre at Versailles, very roughly turned out one of the King's comptrollers who had taken his seat on one of the benches, a place to which his newly acquired office entitled him. In vain he insisted on his quality and his right. The altercation was ended by the brigade-major in these words: 'Gentlemen Body Guards, do your duty.' In this case their duty was to turn the offender out at the door. This comptroller, who had paid sixty or eighty thousand francs for his appointment, was a man of a good family, and had had the honour of serving his Majesty five and twenty years in one of his regiments; thus ignominiously driven out of the hall, he placed himself in the King's way in the great hall of the Guards, and, bowing to his Majesty, requested him to vindicate the honour of an old soldier who had wished to end his days in his Prince's civil employment, now that age had obliged him to relinquish his military service. The King stopped, heard his story, and then ordered him to follow him. His Majesty attended the representation in a sort of amphitheatre, in which his armchair was placed; behind him was a row of stools for the captain of the Guards, the first gentleman of the chamber, and other great officers. The brigade-major was entitled to one of these places; the King stopped opposite the seat which ought to have been occupied by that officer and said to the comptroller, 'Take, monsieur, for this evening, the place near my person of him who has offended you, and let the expression of my displeasure at this unjust affront satisfy you instead of any other reparation:
"During the latter years of the reign of Louis XIV. he never went out but in a chair carried by porters, and he showed a great regard for a man named D'Aigremont, one of those porters who always went in front and opened the door of the chair. The slightest preference shown by sovereigns, even to the meanest of their servants, never fails to excite observation.
[People of the very first rank did not disdain to descend to the level of D'Aigremont. "Lauzun," said the Duchesse d'Orleans in her "Memoirs," "sometimes affects stupidity in order to show people their own with impunity, for he is very malicious. In order to make Marechal de Tease feel the impropriety of his familiarity with people of the common sort, he called out, in the drawing-room at Marly, 'Marechal, give me a pinch of snuff; some of your best, such as you take in the morning with Monsieur d'Aigremont, the chairman.'"--NOTE BY THE EDITOR.]
The King had done something for this man's numerous family, and frequently talked to him. An abbe belonging to the chapel thought proper to request D'Aigremont to present a memorial to the King, in which he requested his Majesty to grant him a benefice. Louis XIV. did not approve of the liberty thus taken by his chairman, and said to him, in a very angry tone, 'D'Aigremont, you have been made to do a very unbecoming act, and I am sure there must be simony in the case.'--'No, Sire, there is not the least ceremony in the case, I assure you,' answered the poor man, in great consternation; 'the abbe only said he would give me a hundred Louis.'--'D'Aigremont,' said the King, 'I forgive you on account of your ignorance and candour. I will give you the hundred Louis out of my privy purse; but I will discharge you the very next time you venture to present a memorial to me.'
"Louis XIV. was very kind to those of his servants who were nearest his person; but the moment he assumed his royal deportment, those who were most accustomed to see him in his