[198] The Dauphin certainly preserved a tender attachment for the memory of his first wife, the Infanta Maria Therese. She died in child-bed in July, 1746. This did not, however, prevent his appreciating the merit of the second Dauphiness. Observing him in tears just before their marriage, she bade him indulge his grief, for it assured her of what she too might expect from his regard if she had the happiness to deserve it. She was by no means popular in the coteries frequented by Walpole, but by the nation at large she was held in high estimation. Her death was ascribed to a disorder she had contracted in nursing her husband. The Duchesse de Lauragais might have treated the expressions of a person in the agonies of death with more indulgence. Judging from this speech, she must have been as heartless as her lover the Maréchal de Richelieu, than whom, allowing for the difference of sex, she was not much more respectable.--E.
[199] The Duchesse was a niece of the financier Croisat, and brought to the Duc the great fortune of four millions of livres. After her husband’s death she retired into a convent, and submitted to severe privations in order to obtain the means of paying not only his debts, but even his legacies, for he had the assurance to make large testamentary bequests, though he must have known himself to be worse than insolvent. She was the Duc’s second wife. His first, also a considerable heiress, died within a year of their marriage, and he generously restored her fortune to her relations, though he was at that time poor.--E.
[200] His mal-administration of Brittany was an appropriate prelude to his career as President of the Council. In both offices he incurred almost universal hatred and contempt. It was at the Court alone that he shone. There his brilliant success was undeniable; and indeed it is not to be wondered at, for he was eminently adroit and specious; and, with a noble deportment, he possessed the art of expressing himself nobly. The English officers taken at St. Cas returned home fascinated by his urbanity and generous sayings. Though an undisguised profligate, he was the acknowledged leader of the religious party to which the Dauphin belonged, and the confidant of that exemplary Prince; and this did not prevent his subsequently becoming the minister of Louis the Fifteenth. The Duc was the great-nephew of Cardinal de Richelieu, and had inherited Aiguillon from the Cardinal’s favourite niece, Madame de Combalet. He died in 1783, leaving an only son.--E.