Simply repeating an edition of 1863, the Mercure de France offers us a choice redacted by moral nitpicking the nineteenth century letters of Madame Palatine, and thus deprives us of those tasty, funny, saucy, if not near scatology, which are one of the peculiarities of his epistolary art.
It is curious to see additional Editor borrow the title of Princess Palatine to style the Duchess of Orleans. While Elisabeth Charlotte Wittelsbach Princess Palatine of the Rhine (and not of Bavaria) before her marriage, she will not be called after this that "Madame"-since the king's brother, her husband, is traditionally called "Sir," while short, or even better "Madame Palatine", allowing to differentiate it from the first wife of the Duke of Orleans, Henrietta of England.
And incidentally, the one that history has chosen as the Princess Palatine's Anne de Gonzaga, wife of Eduard, paternal uncle of Elizabeth Charlotte.
Despite its shortcomings, a collection which is enough to get an idea of the spirit and talent, so natural, that princess. And that is the surprise, always prevails when reading his letters surprise to see so lucid, so much good sense especially in matters of religion, rub both credulity of naive greed for wives' tales, wonderful or sordid stories that ran the court and the city; surprised to see that spirit which knows to be so lively, so insightful also be completely obscured, suffocated by hatred and resentment, then gathering with relish any gossip, magnifying the worst or most obvious slander affecting the hated person, licking to get heard with a smile that his instinct had long since, warned ...
Curiously too, the princess whose religion is so flexible and firm, supple by its tolerance and distaste for the vain theological disputes, closed by ecumenical Christian principles before the letter, while tolerance and charity; this princess whose language can be so green, so the strong hatred and boundless credulity, was also one of the most virtuous women of her time.
And ribaldry we charged him, the taste for salacious anecdote, gossip scabrous like the most foolish fables, they do not compensate a painful chastity? "Can we become again virgin, she quips, since twelve years ago that my husband did not touch me?"
As for the hatred she first door to Madame de Montespan and Madame de Maintenon, even the little Duchess of Burgundy, all women who are away from more or less of Louis XIV, this hatred baked and annealed and never satiated, never appeased, especially with regard to the Maintenon, "the old ripopée" (the name of a fund sauces mixture heated) Is not the mark of repressed love it has, from day one, the king brought his brother? Passion Funck-Brentano described with very right words in his book on Madame Palatine ("Liselotte, Duchess of Orleans, mother of the Regent," Nouvelle Revue Critique, 1936): "His feeling for the king a feeling 'absolute purity, while enthusiasm, admiration, deference and moved dazzled by the splendor of the largest and most powerful monarch of his time, had been the prevailing sentiment of his life, putting her shivers of joy and spasms of despair as the Sun King showed her friendship or favor. "
Yes, this princess to grenadier stature, facies of porters, outspoken, hid a love numb ...
