, born in 1601. It records every act of the future monarch:
his screaming and kicking in the arms of his nurses, his refusals to
be washed and dressed, his resistance when his hair was combed; how he
scratched his governess, and called her names; how he quarrelled with
the children of his father's mistresses, and at the age of four
declined to accept them as brothers and sisters; how his mother
slighted him; and how his father sometimes caressed, sometimes teased,
and sometimes corrected him with his own hand. The details of the
royal nursery are, we may add, astounding for their grossness; and the
language and the manners amid which the infant monarch grew up were
worthy of the days of Rabelais.
Frontenac and his children appear frequently, and not unfavorably, on
the pages of this singular diary. Thus, when the Dauphin was three
years old, the king, being in bed, took him and a young Frontenac of
about the same age, set them before him, and amused Himself by making
them rally each other in their infantile language. The infant
Frontenac had a trick of stuttering, which the Dauphin caught from
him, and retained for a long time. Again, at the age of five, the
Dauphin, armed with a little gun, played at soldier with two of the
Frontenac children in the hall at St.
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