THREE:Mme. de Montesson had so far succeeded in her plan that she had, in 1773, been privately married to the Duke of Orlans. The marriage was celebrated at midnight in the presence of a small number of persons of high position. But the marriage, though known and recognised in society, was only a morganatic one. Louis XV. would never hear of her taking the rank and title of Duchess of Orlans, or any precedence that would have been the consequence. This was of course a continual grievance to her, but she was obliged to resign herself and make the best of the position, at any rate far more exalted than any to which she had the least pretension to aspire. She had an unbounded influence over the Duc dOrlans, in whose household and amongst whose friends she was always treated as a princess, and with whom she led a life of unbounded luxury and magnificence. Like Mme. de Maintenon after her morganatic marriage with Louis XIV. she renounced the title of Marquise and was known as Mme. de Montesson, possibly thinking like the hero of the well-known incident: Princesse je ne puis pas, Marquise je ne veux pas, Madame je suis.But the most extraordinary and absurd person in the family was the Marchale de Noailles, mother of the Duc dAyen, whose eccentricity was such that she might well have been supposed to be mad. It was, however, only upon certain points that her delusions were so singularotherwise she seems to have been only an eccentric person, whose ideas of rank and position amounted to a mania.
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