A Day in the life of King Stanislas

So much of the pleasure of history lies in discovering the little details of lost lives!  In the case of King Stanislas we are fortunate to be able to profit from the thoroughly researched and stylishly presented accounts of the early 20th-century Lorraine scholar Pierre Boyé. The following evocation of Stanislas's daily routine is translated/abridged from an article of his, which first appeared in Le Pays lorrain for 1932.

Reference

Pierre Boyé, "La journée du roi Stanislas", Le Pays lorrain: revue régionale bi-mensuelle illustrée, 1st January 1932, p.97-120.  

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6579594x/f121.item#

Attributed to Nicolas de Mirbeck, Stanislas smoking his pipe. First half of the 19th c. Musée lorrain. 
 http://journaldedurival.fr/html/galerie.html

Early morning routines

Let us allow ourselves to be transported into the the bedchamber of the King, whose apartments at Lunéville occupy the wing of the château overlooking the Parc des Bosquets. The windows are the third and fourth from the north-east corner of the building, on the ground floor. There is a view, beyond the terrace, of the valley of the river Vezouze and of the hills of Jolivet.  It is not yet five o'clock in the morning in summer, six o'clock in winter, when the prince rises. Having said his prayers, he drinks a simple cup of tea or his preferred bouillon-blanc... Now he is smoking his pipe.

King Stanislas in Lorraine

Portrait of Stanislas by Jean-François Foisse dit Brabant (1708-1763) 
Acquired by the Musée du Château de Lunéville  in 2016.

Stanisław Leszczyński, King of Poland and latterly Duke of Lorraine and Bar, was one of those marvellous, larger-than-life 18th-century characters.  His character seems to span the whole gamut of 18th century sensibilities, from the remote central European worlds of Baroque piety, mechanical marvels and Court dwarves to the brightly-lit rationalism of the philosophes.