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Thus, with this regularity which he never deviated from, he was served with the utmost exactitude. He treated his valets well, above all those of the household. It was amongst them that he felt most at ease, and that he unbosomed himself the most familiarly, especially to the chiefs. Their friendship and their aversion have often had grand results.
These attendants were a small number of valets and doctors, two gentlemen of the chamber, one or two ladies, and the majordomo-major of the King. This last post was filled by the Duc d'Escalone, always called Marquis de Villena, in every way one of the greatest noblemen in Spain, and most respected and revered of all, and justly so, for his virtue, his appointment, and his services.
They knocked repeatedly with all their strength; a servant of one of the King's valets de chambre came and opened it; the Queen entered the King's chamber, but he was not there.
The Cure, who was accustomed to go and learn the news every evening, found, against all custom, the doors thrown wide open, and the valets in confusion.
You will take me just as I am or not at all. That will depend altogether upon the change of humor that the acquisition of honors may produce in you " "Jéliotte! we shall see, Jéliotte!" "Well! You can take me or leave me. And as I do not wish to be confounded with the cringing valets who crowd your antechambers " "You crowd nothing, you will not dance attendance.
They went away in fact, but left the door open, so that they could hear all, and see all, too, by the glass. This was the great danger of the cabinets. The valets being gone, Louvois did not dissimulate from the King his mission. The monarch was often false, but incapable of rising above his own falsehood.
"When the masters are asleep, the valets should retire to bed; and when the masters are awake, the valets should be on their feet." These words produced the intended effect; and that very evening, as soon as the Emperor was in bed, all at the palace retired, and at half-past eleven no one was awake but the sentinels.
Neither could I wonder at all this, when I saw such an interruption of lineages, by pages, lackeys, valets, coachmen, gamesters, fiddlers, players, captains, and pickpockets. I was chiefly disgusted with modern history.
In the halls which they haunted of yore, turned now into a historical picture-gallery, one sees them still, on the canvas of Lenfant, Lepaon, or Vernet, facing death with careless gallantry, in their small three-cornered hats, powdered perukes, embroidered coats, and lace ruffles. Their valets served them with ices in the trenches, under the cannon of besieged towns.
Among his camp habits was one which he had formed in his youth and kept up to the last: it was that of sleeping every night on clean straw stuffed into a leathern case. The first thing his valets did on being shown their master's bedroom in Windsor Castle was to send out for a truss of straw for the Emperor's bed.
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