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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Volume
+V., by Madame La Marquise De Montespan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Volume V.
+       Being the Historic Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV.
+
+Author: Madame La Marquise De Montespan
+
+Release Date: September 29, 2006 [EBook #3851]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARQUISE DE MONTESPAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+MEMOIRS OF MADAME LA MARQUISE DE MONTESPAN
+
+Written by Herself
+
+
+Being the Historic Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 5.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The Prince de Mont-Beliard.--He Agrees to the Propositions Made Him.--The
+King's Note.--Diplomacy of the Chancellor of England.--Letter from the
+Marquis de Montespan.--The Duchy in the Air.--The Domain of Navarre,
+Belonging to the Prince de Bouillon, Promised to the Marquise.
+
+
+There was but a small company this year at the Waters of Bourbonne,--to
+begin with, at any rate; for afterwards there appeared to be many
+arrivals, to see me, probably, and Mademoiselle de Nantes.
+
+The Chancellor Hyde was already installed there, and his establishment
+was one of the most agreeable and convenient; he was kind enough to
+exchange it for mine.  A few days afterwards he informed me of the
+arrival of the Prince de Mont-Beliard, of Wurtemberg, who was anxious to
+pay his respects to me, as though to the King's daughter.  In effect,
+this royal prince came and paid me a visit; I thought him greatly changed
+for such a short lapse of years.
+
+We had seen each other--as, I believe, I have already told--at the time
+of the King's first journey in Flanders.  He recalled all the
+circumstances to me, and was amiable enough to tell me that, instead of
+waning, my beauty had increased.
+
+"It is you, Prince, who embellish everything," I answered him.  "I begin
+to grow like a dilapidated house; I am only here to repair myself."
+
+Less than a year before, M. de Mont-Billiard had lost that amiable
+princess, his wife; he had a lively sense of this loss, and never spoke
+of it without tears in his eyes.
+
+"You know, madame," he told me, "my states are, at present, not entirely
+administered, but occupied throughout by the officers of the King of
+France.  Those persons who have my interests at heart, as well as those
+who delight at my fears, seem persuaded that this provisional occupation
+will shortly become permanent.  I dare not question you on this subject,
+knowing how much discretion is required of you; but I confess that I
+should pass quieter and more tranquil nights if you could reassure me up
+to a certain point."
+
+"Prince," I replied to him, "the King is never harsh except with those of
+whom he has had reason to complain.  M. le Duc de Neubourg, and certain
+other of the Rhine princes, have been thick-witted enough to be disloyal
+to him; he has punished them for it, as Caesar did, and as all great
+princes after him will do.  But you have never shown him either coldness,
+or aversion, or indifference.  He has commanded the Marechal de
+Luxembourg to enter your territory to prevent the Prince of Orange from
+reaching there before us, and your authority has been put, not under the
+domination, but under the protection, of the King of France, who is
+desirous of being able to pass from there into the Brisgau."
+
+Madame de Thianges, Madame de Nevers, and myself did all that lay in our
+power to distract or relieve the sorrows of the Prince; but the loss of
+Mademoiselle de Chatillon, his charming spouse, was much more present
+with him than that of his states; the bitterness which he drew from it
+was out of the retch of all consolation possible.  The Marquise de
+Thianges procured the Chancellor of England to approach the Prince, and
+find out from him, to a certain extent, whether he would consent to
+exchange the County of Mont-Beliard for some magnificent estates in
+France, to which some millions in money would be added.
+
+M. de Wurtemberg asked for a few days in which to reflect, and imagining
+that these suggestions emanated from Versailles, he replied that he could
+refuse nothing to the greatest of kings.  My sister wrote on the day
+following to the Marquis de Louvois, instead of asking it of the King in
+person.  M. de Luvois, who, probably, wished to despoil M. de
+Mont-Beliard without undoing his purse-strings, put this overture before
+the King maliciously, and the King wrote me immediately the following
+letter:
+
+Leave M. de Mont-Beliard alone, and do not speak to him again of his
+estates.  If the matter which occupies Madame de Thianges could be
+arranged, it would be of the utmost propriety that a principality of such
+importance rested in the Crown, at least as far as sovereignty. The case
+of the Principality of Orange is a good enough lesson to me; there must
+be one ruler only in an empire.  As for you, my dear lady, feel no regret
+for all that.  You shall be a duchess, and I am pleased to give you this
+title which you desire.  Let M. de Montespan be informed that his
+marquisate is to be elevated into a duchy with a peerage, and that I will
+add to it the number of seigniories that is proper, as I do not wish to
+deviate from the usage which has become a law, etc.
+
+The prince's decision was definite, and as his character was, there was
+no wavering.  I wrote to him immediately to express my lively gratitude,
+and we considered, the Marquise and I, as to the intermediary to whom we
+could entrust the unsavoury commission of approaching the Marquis de
+Montespan.  He hated all my family from his having obtained no
+satisfaction from it for his wrath.  We begged the Chancellor Hyde, a
+personage of importance, to be good enough to accept this mission; he saw
+no reason to refuse it, and, after ten or eleven days, he received the
+following reply, with which he was moderately amused:
+
+CHATEAU SAINT ELIX .  .  .  .  AT THE WORLD'S END.
+
+I am sensible, my Lord, as I should be, of the honour which you have
+wished to do me, whilst, notwithstanding, permit me to consider it
+strange that a man of your importance has cared to meddle in such a
+negotiation.  His Majesty the King of France did not consult me when he
+wished to make my wife his mistress; it is somewhat remarkable that so
+great a prince expects my intervention today to recompense conduct that I
+have disapproved, that I disapprove, and shall disapprove to my last
+breath.  His Majesty has got eight or ten children from my wife without
+saying a word to me about it; this monarch can surely, therefore, make
+her a present of a duchy without summoning me to his assistance.
+According to all laws, human and divine, the King ought to punish Madame
+de Montespan, and, instead of censuring her, he wishes to make her a
+duchess! .  .  .  Let him make her a princess, even a highness, if he
+likes; he has all the power in his hands.  I am only a twig; he is an
+oak.
+
+If madame is fostering ambition, mine has been satisfied for forty years;
+I was born a marquis; a marquis--apart from some unforeseen
+catastrophe--I will die; and Madame la Marquise, as long as she does not
+alter her conduct, has no need to alter her degree.
+
+I will, however, waive my severity, if M. le Duc du Maine will intervene
+for his mother, and call me his father, however it may be. I am none the
+less sensible, my lord, of the honour of your acquaintance, and since you
+form one of the society of Madame la Marquise, endeavour to release
+yourself from her charms, for she can be an enchantress when she
+likes....  It is true that, from what they tell me, you were not quite
+king in your England.
+
+I am, from out my exile (almost as voluntary as yours), the most obliged
+and grateful of your servants,
+
+DE GONDRIN MONTESPAN.
+
+The Marquise de Thianges felt a certain irritation at the reading of this
+letter; she offered all our excuses for it to the English Chancellor, and
+said to me: "I begin to fear that the King of Versailles is not acting
+with good faith towards you, when he makes your advancement depend on the
+Marquis de Montespan; it is as though he were giving you a duchy in the
+moon."
+
+I sent word to the King that the Marquis refused to assist his generous
+projects; he answered me:
+
+"Very well, we must look somewhere else."
+
+Happily, this domestic humiliation did not transpire at Bourbonne; for M.
+de la Bruyere had arrived there with Monsieur le Prince, and that model
+satirist would unfailingly have made merry over it at my expense.
+
+The best society lavished its attentions on me; Coulanges, whose
+flatteries are so amusing, never left us for a moment.
+
+The Prince, after the States were over, had come to relax himself at
+Bourbonne, which was his property.  After having done all in his power
+formerly to dethrone his master, he is his enthusiastic servitor now that
+he sees him so strong.  He was fascinated with Mademoiselle de Nantes,
+and asked my permission to seek her hand for the Duc de Bourbon, his
+grandson; my reply was, that the alliance was desirable on both sides,
+but that these arrangements were settled only by the King.
+
+In spite of the insolent diatribe of M. de Montespan, the waters proved
+good and favourable; my blood, little by little, grew calm; my pains,
+passing from one knee to the other, insensibly faded away in both; and,
+after having given a brilliant fete to the Prince de Mont-Beliard, the
+English Chancellor, and our most distinguished bathers, I went back to
+Versailles, where the work seemed to me to have singularly advanced.
+
+The King went in advance of us to Corbeil; Madame de Maintenon, her
+pretty nieces, and my children were in the carriage.  The King received
+me with his ordinary kindness, and yet said no word to me of the
+harshness which I had suffered from my husband.  Two or three months
+afterwards he recollected his royal word, and gave me to understand that
+the Prince de Bourbon was shortly going to give up Navarre, in Normandy,
+and that this vast and magnificent estate would be raised to a duchy for
+me.
+
+It has not been yet, at the moment that I write.  Perhaps it is written
+above that I shall never be a duchess.  In such a case, the King would
+not deserve the inward reproaches that my sensibility addresses him,
+since his good-will would be fettered by destiny.
+
+It is my kindness which makes me speak so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The Venetian Drummer.--The Little Olivier.--Adriani's Love.--His
+Ingratitude.--His Punishment.--His Vengeance.--Complaint on This Account.
+
+
+At the great slaughter of Candia, M. de Vivonne had the pleasure of
+saving a young Venetian drummer whom he noticed all covered with blood,
+and senseless, amongst the dead and dying, with whom the field was
+covered far and wide.  He had his wounds dressed and cared for by the
+surgeons of the French navy, with the intention of giving him me, either
+as a valet de chambre or a page, so handsome and agreeable this young
+Italian was.  Adriani was his name.  He presented him to me after the
+return of the expedition to France, and I was sensible of this amiable
+attention of my brother, for truly the peer of this young drummer did not
+exist.
+
+Adrien was admirable to see in my livery, and when my carriage went out,
+he attracted alone all the public attention.  His figure was still not
+all that it might be; it developed suddenly, and then one was not wrong
+in comparing him with a perfect model for the Academy.  He took small
+time in losing the manners which he had brought with him from his
+original calling.  I discovered the best 'ton' in him; he would have been
+far better seated in the interior than outside my equipage.
+Unfortunately, this young impertinent gave himself airs of finding my
+person agreeable, and of cherishing a passion for me; my first valet de
+chambre told me of it at once.  I gave him to the King, who had sometimes
+noticed him in passing.
+
+Adrien was inconsolable at first at this change, for which he was not
+prepared, but his vanity soon came uppermost; he understood that it was
+an advancement, and took himself for a great personage, since he had the
+honour of approaching and serving the King.
+
+The little Olivier--the first assistant in the shop of Madame Camille, my
+dressmaker--saw Adrien, inspired him with love, and herself with much,
+and they had to be married.  I was good-natured enough to be interested
+in this union, and as I had never any fault to find with the intelligent
+services and attentions of the little modiste, I gave her two hundred
+louis, that she might establish herself well and without any waiting.
+
+She had a daughter whom she was anxious to call Athenais.  I thought this
+request excessive; I granted my name of Francoise only.
+
+The young couple would have succeeded amply with their business, since my
+confidence and favour were sufficient to give them vogue; but I was not
+slow in learning that cruel discord had already penetrated to their
+household, and that Adrien, in spite of his adopted country, had remained
+at heart Italian.  Jealous without motive, and almost without love, he
+tormented with his suspicions, his reproaches, and his harshness, an
+attentive and industrious young wife, who loved him with intense love,
+and was unable to succeed in persuading him of it.  From her condition, a
+modiste cannot dispense with being amiable, gracious, engaging.  The
+little Olivier, as pretty as one can be, easily secured the homage of the
+cavaliers.  For all thanks she smiled at the gentlemen, as a well brought
+up woman should do.  Adrien disapproved these manners,--too French, in
+his opinion.  One day he dared to say to his wife, and that before
+witnesses: "Because you have belonged to Madame de Montespan, do you
+think you have the same rights that she has?"  And with that he
+administered a blow to her.
+
+This indecency was reported to me.  I did not take long in discovering
+what it was right to do with Adrien.  I had him sent to Clagny, where I
+happened to be at the time.
+
+"Monsieur the Venetian drummer," I said to him, with the hauteur which it
+was necessary to oppose to his audacity, "Monsieur le Marechal de
+Vivonne, who is always too good, saved your life without knowing you. I
+gave you to the King, imagining that I knew you.  Now I am undeceived,
+and I know, without the least possibility of doubt, that beneath the
+appearance of a good heart you hide the ungrateful and insolent rogue.
+The King needs persons more discreet, less violent, and more polite.
+Madame de Montespan gave you up to the King; Madame de Montespan has
+taken you back this morning to her service.  You depend for the future on
+nobody but Madame de Montespan, and it is her alone that you are bound to
+obey.  Your service in her house has commenced this morning; it will
+finish this evening, and, before midnight, you will leave her for good
+and all.  I have known on all occasions how to pardon slight offences;
+there are some that a person of my rank could not excuse; yours is of
+that number.  Go; make no answer!  Obey, ingrate!  Disappear, I command
+you!"
+
+At these words he tried to throw himself at my feet.  "Go, wretched
+fellow!" I cried to him; and, at my voice, my lackeys ran up and drove
+him from the room and from the chateau.
+
+Almost always these bad-natured folks have cowardly souls.  Adrien, his
+head in a whirl, presented himself to my Suisse at Versailles, who,
+finding his look somewhat sinister, refused to receive him.  He retired
+to my hotel in Paris, where the Suisse, being less of a physiognomist,
+delivered him the key of his old room, and was willing to allow him to
+pass the night there.
+
+Adrien, thinking of naught but how to harm me and give me a memorable
+proof of his vengeance, ran and set fire to my two storehouses, and, to
+put a crown on his rancour, went and hanged himself in an attic.
+
+About two o'clock in the morning, a sick-nurse, having perceived the
+flames, gave loud cries and succeeded in making herself heard.  Public
+help arrived; the fire was mastered.  My Suisse sought everywhere for the
+Italian, whom he thought to be in danger; he stumbled against his corpse.
+What a scene!  What an affliction!  The commissary having had his room
+opened, on a small bureau a letter was found which he had been at the
+pains of writing, and in which he accused me of his despair and death.
+
+The people of Paris have been at all times extravagance and credulity
+itself.  They looked upon this young villain as a martyr, and at once
+dedicated an elegy to him, in which I was compared with Medea, Circe, and
+Fredegonde.
+
+It is precisely on account of this elegy that I have cared to set down
+this cruel anecdote.  My readers, to whom I have just narrated the facts
+with entire frankness, can see well that, instead of having merited
+reproaches, I should only have received praise for my restraint and
+moderation.
+
+It is, assuredly, most painful to have to suffer the abuse of those for
+whom we have never done aught; but the outrages of those whom we have
+succoured, maintained, and favoured are insupportable injuries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The Equipage at Full Speed.--The Poor Vine-grower.--Sensibility of Madame
+de Maintenon.--Her Popularity.--One Has the Right to Crush a Man Who Will
+Not Get Out of the Way.--What One Sees.--What They Tell You.--All Ends at
+the Opera.--One Can Be Moved to Tears and Yet Like Chocolate.
+
+
+Another event with a tragical issue, and one to which I contributed even
+less, served to feed and foster that hatred, mixed with envy, which the
+rabble populace guards always so persistently towards the favourites of
+kings or fortune.
+
+Naturally quick and impatient, I cannot endure to move with calm and
+state along the roads.  My postilions, my coachmen know it, driving in
+such fashion that no equipage is ever met which cleaves the air like
+mine.
+
+I was descending one day the declivity of the Coeur-Volant, between Saint
+Germain and Marly.  The Marquises de Maintenon and d'Hudicourt were in my
+carriage with M. le Duc du Maine, so far as I can remember.  We were
+going at the pace which I have just told, and my outriders, who rode in
+advance, were clearing the way, as is customary.  A vine-grower, laden
+with sticks, chose this moment to cross the road, thinking himself, no
+doubt, agile enough to escape my six horses.  The cries of my people were
+useless.  The imprudent fellow took his own course, and my postilions, in
+spite of their efforts with the reins, could not prevent themselves from
+passing over his body; the wheels followed the horses; the poor man was
+cut in pieces.
+
+At the lamentations of the country folk and the horrified passers-by, we
+stopped.  Madame de Maintenon wished to alight, and when she perceived
+the unfortunate vine-grower disfigured with his wounds, she clasped her
+hands and fell to weeping.  The Marquise d'Hudicourt, who was always
+simplicity itself, followed her friend's example; there was nothing but
+groans and sorrowful exclamations.  My coachman blamed the postilions,
+the postilions the man's obstinacy.
+
+Madame de Maintenon, speaking as though she were the mistress, bade them
+be silent, and dared to say to them before all the crowd: "If you
+belonged to me, I would soon settle you."  At these words all the
+spectators applauded, and cried: "Vive Madame de Maintenon!"
+
+Irritated at what I had just heard, I put my head out of the door, and,
+turning to these sentimental women, I said to them: "Be good enough to
+get in, mesdames; are you determined to have me stoned?"
+
+They mounted again, after having left my purse with the poor relations of
+the dead man; and as far as Ruel, which was our destination, I was
+compelled to listen to their complaints and litanies.
+
+"Admit, madame," I declared to Madame de Maintenon, "that any person
+except myself could and would detest you for the harm you have done me.
+Your part was to blame the postilions lightly and the rustic very
+positively.  My equipage did not come unexpectedly, and my two outriders
+had signalled from their horses."
+
+"Madame," she replied, "you have not seen, as I did, those eyes of the
+unhappy man forced violently from their sockets, his poor crushed head,
+his palpitating heart, from which the blood soaked the pavement; such a
+sight has moved and broken my own heart.  I was, as I am still, quite
+beside myself, and, in such a situation, it is permissible to forget
+discretion in one's speech and the proprieties.  I had no intention of
+giving you pain; I am distressed at having done so.  But as for your
+coachmen I loathe them, and, since you undertake their defence, I shall
+not for the future show myself in your equipage."
+
+[In one of her letters, Madame de Maintenon speaks of this accident, but
+she does not give quite the same account of it.  It is natural that
+Madame de Montespan seeks to excuse her people and herself if she
+can.--EDITOR'S NOTE.]
+
+At Ruel, she dared take the same tone before the Duchesse de Richelieu,
+who rebuked her for officiousness, and out of spite, or some other
+reason, Madame de Maintenon refused to dine.  She had two or three
+swooning fits; her tears started afresh four or five times, and the
+Marquise d'Hudicourt, who dined only by snatches, went into a corner to
+sob and weep along with her.
+
+"Admit, madame," I said then to Madame de Maintenon, "your excessive
+grief for an unknown man is singular.  He was, perhaps, actually a
+dishonest fellow.  The accident which you come back to incessantly, and
+which distresses me also, is doubtless deplorable; but, after all, it is
+not a murder, an ambush, a premeditated assassination.  I imagine that if
+such a catastrophe had happened elsewhere, and been reported to us in a
+gazette or a book, you would have read of it with interest and
+commiseration; but we should not have seen you clasp your hands over your
+head, turn red and pale, utter loud cries, shed tears, sob, and scold a
+coachman, postilions, perhaps even me.  The event, would, nevertheless,
+be actually the same.  Admit, then, madame, and you, too, Madame
+d'Hudicourt, that there is an exaggeration in your sorrow, and that you
+would have made, both of you, two excellent comedians."
+
+Madame de Maintenon, piqued at these last words, sought to make us
+understand, and even make us admit, that there is a great difference
+between an event narrated to you by a third party, and an event which one
+has seen.  Madame de Richelieu shut her mouth pleasantly with these
+words: "We know, Madame la Marquise, how much eloquence and wit is yours.
+We approve all your arguments, past and to be.  Let us speak no further
+of an accident which distresses you; and since you require to be
+diverted, let us go to the Opera, which is only two leagues off."
+
+She consented to accompany us, for fear of proving herself entirely
+ridiculous; but to delay us as much as possible, she required a cup of
+chocolate, her favourite dish, her appetite having returned as soon as
+she had exhausted the possibilities of her grief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Charles II., King of England.--How Interest Can Give Memory.--His
+Grievances against France.--The Two Daughters of the Duke of
+York.--William of Orange Marries One, in Spite of the Opposition of the
+King.--Great Joy of the Allies.--How the King of England Understands
+Peace.--Saying of the King.--Preparations for War.
+
+
+The King, Charles Stuart, who reigned in England since the death of the
+usurper, Cromwell, was a grandson of Henri IV., just as much as our King.
+Charles II. displayed the pronounced penchant of Henri IV. for the ladies
+and for pleasure; but he had neither his energy, nor his genial temper,
+nor his amiable frankness.  After the death of Henrietta of England, his
+beloved sister, he remained for some time longer our ally, but only to
+take great advantage from our union and alliance.  He had made use of it
+against the Dutch, his naval and commercial rivals, and had compelled
+them, by the aid of the King of France (then his friend), to reimburse
+him a sum of twenty-six millions, and to pay him, further, an annual
+tribute of twelve or fifteen thousand livres for the right of fishing
+round his island domains.
+
+All these things being obtained, he seemed to recollect that Cardinal de
+Richelieu had not protected his father, Stuart; that the Cardinal Mazarin
+had declared for Cromwell in his triumph; that the Court of France had
+indecently gone into mourning for that robber; that there had been
+granted neither guards, nor palace, nor homages of state to the Queen,
+his mother, although daughter and sister of two French kings; that this
+Queen, in a modest retirement--sometimes in a cell in the convent of
+Chaillot, sometimes in her little pavilion at Colombesl--had died,
+poisoned by her physician, without the orator, Bossuet, having even
+frowned at it in the funeral oration; that the unfortunate Henrietta
+daughter of this Queen and first wife of Monsieur had succumbed to the
+horrible tortures of a poisoning even more visible and manifest; whilst
+her poisoners, who were well known, had never been in the least blamed
+or disgraced.
+
+[Mademoiselle de Montpensier, in her Memoirs, says that this Queen,
+already languishing, had lost her sleep, and was given soporific pills,
+on account of which Henrietta of France awoke no more; but it is probable
+that the servants, and not the doctors, committed this blunder.]
+
+On all these arguments, with more or less foundation, Charles II. managed
+to conclude that he ought to detach himself from France, who was not
+helpful enough; and, by deserting us, he excited universal joy amongst
+his subjects, who were constantly jealous of us.
+
+Charles Stuart had had children by his mistresses; he had had none by the
+Queen, his wife.  The presumptive heir to the Crown was the Duke of York,
+his Majesty's only brother.
+
+The Duke of York, son-in-law--as I have noticed already--of our good
+Chancellor, Lord Hyde, had himself only two daughters, equally beautiful,
+who, according to the laws of those islanders, would bear the sceptre in
+turn.
+
+Our King, who read in the future, was thinking of marrying these two
+princesses conformably with our interests, when the Prince of Orange
+crossed the sea, and went formally to ask the hand of the elder of his
+uncle.
+
+Informed of this proceeding, the King at once sent M. de Croissy-Colbert
+to the Duke of York, to induce him to interfere and refuse his daughter;
+but, in royal families, it is always the head who makes and decides
+marriages.  William of Orange obtained his charming cousin Mary, and
+acquired that day the expectation of the Protestant throne, which was his
+ambition.
+
+At the news of this marriage, the allies, that is to say, all the King's
+enemies, had an outburst of satisfaction, and gave themselves up to
+puerile jubilations.  The King of Great Britain stood definitely on their
+side; he made common cause with them, and soon there appeared in the
+political world an audacious document signed by this prince, in which,
+from the retreat of his island, the empire of fogs, he dared to demand
+peace from Louis of Bourbon, his ancient ally and his cousin german,
+imposing on him the most revolting conditions.
+
+According to the English monarch, France ought to restore to the
+Spaniards, first Sicily, and, further, the towns of Charleroi, Ath,
+Courtrai, Condo, Saint Guilain, Tournai, and Valenciennes, as a condition
+of retaining Franche-Comte; moreover, France was compelled to give up
+Lorraine to the Duke Charles, and places in German Alsace to the Emperor.
+
+The King replied that "too much was too much."  He referred the decision
+of his difficulties to the fortune of war, and collected fresh soldiers.
+
+Then, without further delay, England and the States General signed a
+particular treaty at La Hague, to constrain France (or, rather, her
+ruler) to accept the propositions that his pride refused to hear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The Great Mademoiselle Buys Choisy.--The President Gonthier.--The
+Indemnity.--The Salmon.--The Harangue as It Is Not Done in the Academy.
+
+
+The King had only caused against his own desire the extreme grief which
+Mademoiselle felt at the imprisonment of Lauzun.  His Majesty was
+sensible of the wisdom of the resolution which she had made not to break
+with the Court, and to show herself at Saint Germain, or at Versailles,
+from time to time, as her rank, her near kinship, her birth demanded. He
+said to me one day: "My cousin is beginning to look up.  I see with
+pleasure that her complexion is clearing, that she laughs willingly at
+this and that, and that her good-will for me is restored.  I am told that
+she is occupied in building a country-house above Vitry.  Let us go
+to-day and surprise her, and see what this house of Choisy is like."
+
+We arrived at a sufficiently early hour, and had time to see everything.
+The King found the situation most agreeable; those lovely gardens united
+high up above the Seine, those woods full of broad walks, of light and
+air, those points of view happily chosen and arranged, gave a charming
+effect; the house of one story, raised on steps of sixteen stairs,
+appeared to us elegant from its novelty; but the King blamed his cousin
+for not having put a little architecture and ornament on the facade.
+
+"Princes," said he, "have no right to be careless; since universal
+agreement has made us Highnesses, we must know how to carry our burden,
+and to lay it down at no time, and in no place."
+
+Mademoiselle excused herself on the ground of her remoteness from the
+world, and on the expense, which she wished to keep down.
+
+"From the sight of the country," said the King, "you must have a hundred
+to a hundred and twelve, acres here."
+
+"A hundred and nine," she answered.
+
+"Have you paid dear for this property?" went on the King.  "It is the
+President Gonthier who has sold it?"
+
+"I paid for this site, and the old house which no longer exists, forty
+thousand livres," she said.
+
+"Forty thousand livres!" cried the King.  "Oh, my cousin, there is no
+such thing as conscience!  You have not paid for the ground.  I was
+assured that poor President Gonthier had only got rid of his house at
+Choisy because his affairs were embarrassed; you must indemnify him, or
+rather I will indemnify him myself, by giving him a pension."
+
+Mademoiselle bit her lip and added:
+
+"The President asked sixty thousand first; my men of business offered him
+forty, and he accepted it."
+
+Mademoiselle has no generosity, although she is immensely rich; she
+pretended not to hear, and it was M. Colbert who sent by order the twenty
+thousand livres to the President.
+
+Mademoiselle, vain and petty, as though she were a bourgeoise of
+yesterday, showed us her gallery, where she had already collected the
+selected portraits of all her ancestors, relations, and kindred; she
+pointed out to us in her winter salon the portrait of the little Comte de
+Toulouse, painted, not as an admiral, but as God of the Sea, floating on
+a pearl shell; and his brother, the Duc du Maine, as Colonel-General of
+the Swiss and Grisons.  The full-length portrait of the King was visible
+on three chimneypieces; she was at great pains to make a merit of it, and
+call for thanks.
+
+Having followed her into her state chamber, where she had stolen in
+privately, I saw that she was taking away the portrait of Lauzun.  I went
+and told it to the King, who shrugged his shoulders and fell to laughing.
+
+"She is fifty-two years old," he said to me.
+
+A very pretty collation of confitures and fruits was served us, to which
+the King prayed her to add a ragout of peas and a roasted fowl.
+
+During the repast, he said to her: "For the rest, I have not noticed the
+portrait of Gaston, your father; is it a distraction on my part, or an
+omission on yours?"
+
+"It will be put there later," she answered.  "It is not time."
+
+"What! your father!"  added the King.  "You do not think that, cousin!"
+
+"All my actions," added the Princess, "are weighed in the balance
+beforehand; if I were to exhibit the portrait of my father at the head of
+these various pictures, I should have to put my stepmother, his wife,
+there too, as a necessary pendant.  The harm which she has done me does
+not permit of that complacence.  One opens one's house only to one's
+friends."
+
+"Your stepmother has never done you any other harm," replied the King,
+"than to reclaim for her children the funds or the furniture left by your
+father.  The character of Margaret of Lorraine has always been sweetness
+itself; seeing your irritation, she begged me to arbitrate myself; and
+you know all that M. Colbert and the Chancellor did to satisfy you under
+the circumstances.  But let us speak of something else, and cease these
+discussions.  I have a service to ask of you: here is M. le Duc du Maine
+already big; everybody knows of your affection for him, and I have seen
+his portrait with pleasure, in one of your salons.  I am going to
+establish him; would it be agreeable to you if I give him your livery?"
+
+"M. le Duc du Maine," said the Princess, "is the type of what is
+gracious, and noble, and beautiful; he can only do honour to my livery; I
+grant it him with all my heart, since you do me the favour of desiring
+it.  Would I were in a position to do more for him!"
+
+The King perfectly understood these last words; he made no reply to them,
+but he understood all that he was meant to understand.  We went down
+again into the gardens.
+
+The fishermen of Choisy had just caught a salmon of enormous size, which
+they had been pursuing for four or five days; they had intended to offer
+it to Mademoiselle; the presence of the King inspired them with another
+design.  They wove with great diligence a large and pretty basket of
+reeds, garnished it with foliage, young grass, and flowers, and came and
+presented to the King their salmon, all leaping in the basket.
+
+The fisherman charged with the address only uttered a few words; they
+were quite evidently improvised, so that they gave more pleasure and
+effect than those of academicians, or persons of importance.  The
+fisherman expressed himself thus:
+
+"You have brought us good fortune, Sire, by your presence, as you bring
+fortune to your generals.  You arrive on the Monday; on the Tuesday the
+town is taken.  We come to offer to the greatest of kings the greatest
+salmon that can be caught."
+
+The King desired this speech to be instantly transcribed; and, after
+having bountifully rewarded the sailors, his Majesty said to
+Mademoiselle:
+
+"This man was born to be a wit; if he were younger, I would place him in
+a college.  There is wit at Choisy in every rank of life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Departure of the King.--Ghent Reduced in Five Days.--Taking of
+Ypres.--Peace Signed.--The Prince of Orange Is at Pains Not to Know of
+It.--Horrible Cruelties.
+
+
+I have related in what manner Charles II., suddenly pronouncing in favour
+of his nephew, the Prince of Orange, had signed a league with his old
+enemies, the Dutch, in order to counteract the success of the King of
+France and compel him to sign a humiliating and entirely inadmissible
+peace.
+
+The King left Versailles suddenly on the 4th of February, 1678, taking,
+with his whole Court, the road to Lorraine, while waiting for the troops
+which had wintered on the frontiers, and were investing at once
+Luxembourg, Charlemont, Namur, Mons, and Ypres, five of the strongest and
+best provisioned places in the Low Countries.  By this march and
+manoeuvre, he wished to hoodwink the allied generals, who were very far
+from imagining that Ghent was the point towards which the Conqueror's
+intentions were directed.
+
+In effect, hardly had the King seen them occupied in preparing the
+defence of the above named places, when, leaving the Queen and the ladies
+in the agreeable town of Metz, he rapidly traversed sixty leagues of
+country, and laid siege to the town of Ghent, which was scarcely
+expecting him.
+
+The Spanish governor, Don Francisco de Pardo, having but a weak garrison
+and little artillery, decided upon releasing the waters and inundating
+the country; but certain heights remained which could not be covered, and
+from here the French artillery started to storm the ramparts and the
+fort.
+
+The siege was commenced on the 4th of March; upon the 9th the town opened
+its gates, and two days later the citadel.  Ypres was carried at the end
+of a week, in spite of the most obstinate resistance.  Our grenadiers
+performed prodigies, and lost all their officers, without exception. I
+lost there one of my nephews, the one hope of his family; my compliments
+to the King, therefore, were soon made.
+
+He went to Versailles to take back the Queen, and returned to Ghent with
+the speed and promptitude of lightning.  The same evening he sent an
+order to a detachment of the garrison of Maestricht to hasten and seize
+the town and citadel of Leuwe, in Brabant, which was executed on the
+instant.  It was then that the Dutch sent their deputation, charged to
+plead for a suspension of hostilities for six weeks.  The King granted
+it, although these blunderers hardly merited it.  They undertook that
+Spain should join them in the peace, and finally, after some
+difficulties, settled more or less rightly, the treaty was signed on the
+10th of August, just as the six weeks were about to expire.
+
+The Prince of Orange, naturally bellicose, and, above all things,
+passionately hostile to France, pretended to ignore the existence of this
+peace, which he disapproved.  The Marechal de Luxembourg, informed of the
+treaty, gave himself up to the security of the moment; he was actually at
+table with his numerous officers when he was warned that the Prince of
+Orange was advancing against him.  The alarm was quickly sounded; such
+troops and cavalry as could be were assembled, and a terrible action
+ensued.
+
+At first we were repulsed, but soon the Marshal rallied his men; he
+excited their indignation by exposing to them the atrocity of M.
+d'Orange, and after a terrible massacre, in which two thousand English
+bit the dust, the Marechal de Luxembourg remained master of the field.
+
+He was victorious, but in this unfortunate action we lost, ourselves, the
+entire regiment of guards, that of Feuquieres, and several others
+besides, with an incredible quantity of officers, killed or wounded.
+
+The name of the Prince of Orange, since that day, was held in horror in
+both armies, and he would have fallen into disgrace with the States
+General themselves had it not been for the protection of the King of
+England, to whom the Dutch were greatly bound.
+
+On the following day, this monster sent a parliamentary officer to the
+French generals to inform them that during the night official news of the
+peace had reached him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Mission of Madame de Maintenon to Choisy.--Mademoiselle Gives the
+Principalities of Eu and Dombes in Exchange for M. de Lauzun.--He Is Set
+at Liberty.
+
+
+The four or five words which had escaped Mademoiselle de Montpensier had
+remained in the King's recollection.  He said to me: "If you had more
+patience, and a sweeter and more pliant temper, I would employ you to go
+and have a little talk with Mademoiselle, in order to induce her to
+explain what intentions she may have relative to my son."
+
+"I admit, Sire," I answered him, "that I am not the person required for
+affairs of that sort.  Your cousin is proud and cutting; I would not
+endure what she has made others endure.  I cannot accept such a
+commission.  But Madame de Maintenon, who is gentleness itself, is
+suitable--no one more so for this mission; she is at once insinuating and
+respectful; she is attached to the Duc du Maine.  The interests of my son
+could not be in better hands."
+
+The King agreed with me, and both he and I begged the Marquise to conduct
+M. du Maine to Choisy.
+
+Mademoiselle de Montpensier received him with rapture.  He thanked her
+for what she had done for him, in granting him her colours, and upon that
+Mademoiselle asked his permission to embrace him, and to tell him how
+amiable and worthy of belonging to the King she found him.  She led him
+to the hall, in which he was to be seen represented as a colonel-general
+of Swiss.
+
+"I have always loved the Swiss," she said, "because of their great
+bravery, their fidelity, and their excellent discipline.  The Marechal de
+Bassompierre made his corps the perfection which it is; it is for you, my
+cousin, to maintain it."
+
+She passed into another apartment, where she was to be seen represented
+as Bellona.  Two Loves were presenting her, one with his helm adorned
+with martial plumes, the other with his buckler of gold, with the
+Orleans-Montpensier arms.  The laurel crown, with which Triumphs were
+ornamenting her head, and the scaled cuirass of Pallas completed her
+decoration.  M. le Duc du Maine praised, without affectation, the
+intelligence of the artist; and as for the figure and the likeness, he
+said to the Princess: "You are good, but you are better."  The calm and
+the naivety of this compliment made Mademoiselle shed tears.  Her emotion
+was visible; she embraced my son anew.
+
+"You have brought him up perfectly," she said to Madame de Maintenon.
+"His urbanity is of good origin; that is how a king's son ought to act
+and speak:
+
+"His Majesty," said Madame de Maintenon, "has been enchanted with your
+country-house; he spoke of it all the evening.  He even added that you
+had ordered it all yourself, without an architect, and that M. le Notre
+would not have done better."
+
+"M. le Notre," replied the Princess, "came here for a little; he wanted
+to cut and destroy, and upset and disarrange, as with the King at
+Versailles.  But I am of a different mould to my cousin; I am not to be
+surprised with big words.  I saw that Le Notre thought only of
+expenditure and tyranny; I thanked him for his good intentions, and
+prayed him not to put himself out for me.  I found there thickets already
+made, of an indescribable charm; he wanted, on the instant, to clear them
+away, so that one could testify that all this new park was his.  If you
+please, madame, tell his Majesty that M. le Notre is the sworn enemy of
+Nature; that he sees only the pleasures of proprietorship in the future,
+and promises us cover and shade just at that epoch of our life when we
+shall only ask for sunshine in which to warm ourselves."
+
+She next led her guests towards the large apartments.  When she had come
+to her bedroom, she showed the Marquise the mysterious portrait, and
+asked if she recognised it.
+
+"Ah, my God! 'tis himself!"  said Madame de Maintenon at once.  "He sees,
+he breathes, he regards us; one might believe one heard him speak.  Why
+do you give yourself this torture?" continued the ambassadress.  "The
+continual presence of an unhappy and beloved being feeds your grief, and
+this grief insensibly undermines you.  In your place, Princess, I should
+put him elsewhere until a happier and more favourable hour."
+
+"That hour will never come," cried Mademoiselle.
+
+"Pardon me," resumed Madame de Maintenon; "the King is never inhuman and
+inexorable; you should know that better than any one.  He punishes only
+against the protests of his heart, and, as soon as he can relent without
+impropriety or danger, he pardons.  M. de Lauzun, by refusing haughtily
+the marshal's baton, which was offered him in despite of his youth,
+deeply offended the King, and the disturbance he allowed himself to make
+at Madame de Montespan's depicted him as a dangerous and wrong-headed
+man.  Those are his sins.  Rest assured, Princess, that I am well
+informed.  But as I know, at the same time, that the King was much
+attached to him,--and is still so, to some extent, and that a captivity
+of ten years is a rough school, I have the assurance that your Highness
+will not be thought importunate if you make today some slight attempt
+towards a clemency."
+
+"I will do everything they like," Mademoiselle de Montpensier said then;
+"but shall I have any one near his Majesty to assist and support my
+undertaking?  I have no more trust in Madame de Montespan; she has
+betrayed us, she will betray us again; the offence of M. de Lauzun is
+always present in her memory, and she is a lady who does not easily
+forgive.  As for you, madame, I know that the King considers you for the
+invaluable services of the education given to his children.  Deign to
+speak and act in favour of my unhappy husband, and I will make you a
+present of one of my fine titled territories."
+
+Madame de Maintenon was too acute to accept anything in such a case; she
+answered the Princess that her generosities, to please the King, should
+be offered to M. le Duc du Maine, and that, by assuring a part of her
+succession to that young prince, she had a sure method of moving the
+monarch, and of turning his paternal gratitude to the most favourable
+concessions.  The Princess, enchanted, then said to the negotiatrix:
+
+"Be good enough to inform his Majesty, this evening, that I offer to
+give, at once, to his dear and amiable child the County of Eu and my
+Sovereignty of Dombes, adding the revenues to them if it is necessary."
+
+Madame de Maintenon, who worships her pupil, kissed the hand of
+Mademoiselle, and promised to return and see her immediately.
+
+That very evening she gave an account to the King of her embassy; she
+solicited the liberty of the Marquis de Lauzun, and the King commenced by
+granting "the authorisation of mineral waters."
+
+Meanwhile, Mademoiselle, presented by Madame de Maintenon, went to take
+counsel with the King.  She made a formal donation of the two
+principalities which I have named.  His Majesty, out of courtesy, left
+her the revenues, and, in fine, she was permitted to marry her M. de
+Lauzun, and to assure him, by contract, fifty thousand livres of income.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+M. de Brisacier and King Casimir.--One Is Never so Well Praised as by
+Oneself.--He Is Sent to Get Himself Made a Duke Elsewhere.
+
+
+The Abbe de Brisacier, the famous director of consciences, possessed
+enough friends and credit to advance young Brisacier, his nephew, to the
+Queen's household, to whom he had been made private secretary. Slanderers
+or impostors had persuaded this young coxcomb that Casimir, the King of
+Poland, whilst dwelling in Paris in the quality of a simple gentleman,
+had shown himself most assiduous to Madame Brisacier, and that he,
+Brisacier of France, was born of these assiduities of the Polish prince.
+
+When he saw the Comte Casimir raised to the elective throne of Poland, he
+considered himself as the issue of royal blood, and it seemed to him that
+his position with the Queen, Maria Theresa, was a great injustice of
+fortune; he thought, nevertheless, that he ought to remain some time
+longer in this post of inferiority, in order to use it as a ladder of
+ascent.
+
+The Queen wrote quantities of letters to different countries, and
+especially to Spain, but never, or hardly ever, in her own hand.  One
+day, whilst handling all this correspondence for the princess's
+signature, the private secretary slipped one in, addressed to Casimir,
+the Polish King.
+
+In this letter, which from one end to the other sang the praises of the
+Seigneur Brisacier, the Queen had the extreme kindness to remind the
+Northern monarch of his old liaison with the respectable mother of the
+young man, and her Majesty begged the prince to solicit from the King of
+France the title and rank of duke for so excellent a subject.
+
+King Casimir was not, as one knows, distrust and prudence personified; he
+walked blindfold into the trap; he wrote with his royal hand to his
+brother, the King of France, and asked him a brevet as duke for young
+Brisacier.  Our King, who did not throw duchies at people's heads, read
+and re-read the strange missive with astonishment and suspicion.  He
+wrote in his turn to the suppliant King, and begged him to send him the
+why and the wherefore of this hieroglyphic adventure.  The good prince,
+ignorant of ruses, sent the letter of the Queen herself.
+
+Had this princess ever given any reason to be talked about, there is no
+doubt that she would have been lost on this occasion; but there was
+nothing to excite suspicion.  The King, no less, approached her with
+precaution, in order to observe the first results of her answers.
+
+"Madame," he said, "are you still quite satisfied with young Brisacier,
+your private secretary?"
+
+"More or less," replied the Infanta; "a little light, a little absent;
+but, on the whole, a good enough young man."
+
+"Why have you recommended him to the King of Poland, instead of
+recommending him to me directly?"
+
+"To the King of Poland!--I?  I have not written to him since I
+congratulated him on his succession."
+
+"Then, madame, you have been deceived in this matter, since I have your
+last letter in my hands.  Here it is; I return it to you."
+
+The princess read the letter with attention; her astonishment was
+immense.
+
+"My signature has been used without authority," she said.  "Brisacier
+alone can be guilty, being the only one interested."
+
+This new kind of ambitious man was summoned; he was easily confounded.
+The King ordered him to prison, wishing to frighten him for a punishment,
+and at the end of some days he was commanded to quit France and go and be
+made duke somewhere else.
+
+This event threw such ridicule upon pretenders to the ducal state, that I
+no longer dared speak further to the King of the hopes which he had held
+out to me; moreover, the things which supervened left me quite convinced
+of the small success which would attend my efforts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Compliment from Monsieur to the New Prince de Dombes.--Roman
+History.--The Emperors Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, and Verus.--The Danger of
+Erudition.
+
+
+Monsieur, having learnt what his cousin of Montpensier had just done for
+my Duc du Maine, felt all possible grief and envy at it.  He had always
+looked to inherit from her, and the harshest enemy whom M. de Lauzun met
+with at his wedding was, undoubtedly, Monsieur.  When M. le Duc du Maine
+received the congratulations of all the Court on the ground of his new
+dignity of Prince de Dombes, his uncle was the last to appear; even so he
+could not refrain from making him hear these disobliging words,--who
+would believe it?--"If I, too, were to give you my congratulation, it
+would be scarcely sincere; what will be left for my children?"
+
+Madame de Maintenon, who is never at a loss, replied: "There will be left
+always, Monseigneur, the remembrance of your virtues; that is a fair
+enough inheritance."
+
+We complained of it to the King; he reprimanded him in a fine fashion. "I
+gave you a condition so considerable," said he, "that the Queen, our
+mother, herself thought it exaggerated and dangerous in your hands.  You
+have no liking for my children, although you feign a passionate affection
+for their father; the result of your misbehaviour will be that I shall
+grow cool to your line, and that your daughter, however beautiful and
+amiable she may be, will not marry my Dauphin."
+
+At this threat Monsieur was quite overcome, and anxious to make his
+apologies to the King; he assured him of his tender affection for M. le
+Duc du Maine, and would give him to understand that Madame de Maintenon
+had misunderstood him.
+
+"It is not from her that your compliment came to us; it is from M. le Duc
+du Maine, who is uprightness itself, and whose mouth has never lied."
+
+Monsieur then started playing at distraction and puerility; the
+medal-case was standing opened, his gaze was turned to it.  Then he came
+to me and said in a whisper: "I pray you, come and look at the coin of
+Marcus Aurelius; do you not find that the King resembles that emperor in
+every feature?"
+
+"You are joking," I answered him.  "His Majesty is as much like him as
+you are like me."
+
+He insisted, and his brother, who witnessed our argument, wished to know
+the reason.  When he understood, he said to Monsieur: "Madame de
+Montespan is right; I am not in the least like that Roman prince in face.
+The one to whom I should wish to be like in merit is Trajan."
+
+"Trajan had fine qualities," replied Monsieur; "that does not prevent me
+from preferring Marcus Aurelius."
+
+"On what grounds?"  asked his Majesty.
+
+"On the grounds that he shared his throne with Verus," replied Monsieur,
+unhesitatingly.
+
+The King flushed at this reply, and answered in few words: "Marcus
+Aurelius's action to his brother may, be called generous; it was none the
+less inconsiderate.  By his own confession, the Emperor Verus proved, by
+his debauchery and his vices, unworthy, of the honour which had been done
+him.  Happily, he died from his excesses during the Pannonian War, and
+Marcus Aurelius could only do well from that day on."
+
+Monsieur, annoyed with his erudition and confused at his escapade, sought
+to change the conversation.  The King, passing into his cabinet, left him
+entirely, in my charge.  I scolded him for his inconsequences, and he
+dared to implore me to put his daughter "in the right way," to become one
+day Queen of France by marrying Monsieur le Dauphin, whom she loved
+already with her whole heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The Benedictines of Fontevrault.--The Head in the Basin.--The
+Unfortunate Delivery.--The Baptism of the Monster.--The Courageous
+Marriage.--Foundation of the Royal Abbey of Fontevrault.
+
+
+Two or three days after our arrival at Fontevrault, the King, who loves
+to know all the geographical details of important places, asked me of the
+form and particulars of the celebrated abbey.  I gave him a natural
+description of it.
+
+"They are two vast communities," I told him, "which the founder, for some
+inexplicable whim, united in one domain, of an extent which astonishes
+the imagination."
+
+The Community of Benedictine Nuns is regarded as the first, because of
+the abbotorial dignity it possesses.  The Community of Benedictine Monks
+is only second,--a fact which surprises greatly strangers and visitors.
+Both in the monastery and the convent the buildings are huge and
+magnificent, the courts spacious, the woods and streams well distributed
+and well kept.
+
+"Every morning you may see a hundred and fifty to two hundred ploughs
+issue from both establishments; these spread over the plain and till an
+immense expanse of land.  Carts drawn by bullocks, big mules, or superb
+horses are ceaselessly exporting the products of the fields, the meadows,
+or the orchards.  Innumerable cows cover the pastures, and legions of
+women and herds are employed to look after these estates.
+
+"The aspect of Fontevrault gives an exact idea of the ancient homes of
+the Patriarchs, in their remote periods of early civilisation, which saw
+the great proprietors delighting in their natal hearth, and finding their
+glory, as well as their happiness, in fertilising or assisting nature.
+
+"The abbess rules like a sovereign over her companion nuns, and over the
+monks, her neighbours.  She appoints their officers and their temporal
+prince.  It is she who admits postulants, who fixes the dates of
+ordinations, pronounces interdictions, graces, and penances.  They render
+her an account of their administration and the employment of their
+revenues, from which she subtracts carefully her third share, as the
+essential right of her crosier of authority."
+
+"Have you invited the Benedictine Fathers to your fete in the wood?"  the
+King asked me, smiling.
+
+"We had no power, Sire," I answered.  "There are many young ladies being
+educated with the nuns of Fontevrault.  The parents of these young ladies
+respectful as they are to these monks, would have looked askance at the
+innovation.  The Fathers never go in there.  They are to be seen at the
+abbey church, where they sing and say their offices.  Only the three
+secular chaplains of the abbess penetrate into the house of the nuns; the
+youngest of the three cannot be less than fifty.
+
+"The night of the feast the monks draw near our cloister by means of a
+wooden theatre, which forms a terrace, and from this elevation they
+participate by the eye and ear in our amusements; that is enough."
+
+"Has Madame de Mortemart ever related to you the origin of her abbey?"
+resumed the King.  "Perhaps she is ignorant of it.  I am going to tell
+you of it, for it is extremely curious; it is not as it is related in the
+books, and I take the facts from good authority.  You must hear of it,
+and you will see.
+
+"There was once a Comtesse de Poitiers, named Honorinde, to whom fate had
+given for a husband the greatest hunter in the world.  This man would
+have willingly passed his life in the woods, where he hunted, night and
+day, what we call, in hunter's parlance, 'big game.'  Having won the
+victory over a monstrous boar, he cut off the head himself, and this
+quivering and bleeding mask he went to offer to his lady in a basin.  The
+young woman was in the first month of her pregnancy.  She was filled with
+repugnance and fright at the sight of this still-threatening head; it
+troubled her to the prejudice of her fruit.
+
+"Eight, or seven and a half, months afterwards, she brought into the
+world a girl who was human in her whole body, but above had the horrible
+head of a wild boar!  Imagine what cries, what grief, what despair!  The
+cure of the place refused baptism, and the Count, broken down and
+desolate, ordered the child to be drowned.
+
+"Instead of throwing it into the water, his servant scrupulously went
+straight to the monastery where your sister rules.  He laid down his
+closed packet in the church of the monks, and then returned to his lord,
+who never had any other child.
+
+"The religious Benedictines, not knowing whence this monster came,
+believed there was some prodigy in it.  They baptised in this little
+person all that was not boar, and left the surplus to Providence.  They
+brought up the singular creature in the greatest secrecy; it drank and
+lapped after the manner of its kind.  As it grew up it walked on its
+feet, and that without the least imperfection; it could sit down, go on
+its knees, and even make a courtesy.  But it never articulated any
+distinct words, and it had always a harsh and rough voice which howled
+and grunted.  Its intelligence never reached the knowledge of reading or
+writing; but it understood easily all that could be said to it, and the
+proof was that it replied by its actions.
+
+"The Comte de Poitiers having died whilst hunting, Honorinde learnt of
+her old serving-man in what refuge, in what asylum, he had long ago
+deposited the little one.  This good mother proceeded there, and the
+monks, after some hesitation, confessed what had become of it.  She
+wished to see it; they showed it her.  At its aspect she felt the same
+inward commotion which had, years before, perverted nature.  She groaned,
+fainted, burst into tears, and never had the courage and firmness to
+embrace what she had seen.
+
+"Her gratitude was not less lively and sincere; she handed a considerable
+sum to the Benedictines of Fontevrault, charging them to continue their
+good work and charity.
+
+"The reverend Prior, reflecting that his hideous inmate came of a great
+family, and of a family of great property, resolved to procure it as a
+wife for his nephew.  He sounded the young man, who looked fixedly at his
+future bride, and avowed that he was satisfied.
+
+"She is a good Christian," he replied to his uncle, since you have
+baptised her here.  She is of a good family, since Honorinde has
+recognised her.  There are many as ugly as she is to be seen who still
+find husbands.  I will put a pretty mask on her, and the mask will give
+me sufficient illusion.  Benedicte, so far as she goes, is well-made; I
+hope to have fine children who will talk.
+
+"The Prior commenced by marrying them; he then confided in Honorinde,
+who, not daring to noise abroad this existence, was compelled to submit
+to what had been done.
+
+"The marriage of the young she-monster was not happy.  She bit her
+husband from morning to night.  She did not know how to sit at table, and
+would only eat out of a trough.  She needed neither an armchair, a sofa,
+nor a couch; she stretched herself out on the sand or on the pavement.
+
+"Her husband, in despair, demanded the nullification of his marriage; and
+as the courts did not proceed fast enough for his impatience, he killed
+his companion, Benedicte, with a pistol-shot, at the moment when she was
+biting and tearing him before witnesses.
+
+"Honorinde had her buried at Fontevrault, and over her tomb, at the end
+of the year, she built a convent, to which her immense property was
+given, where she retired herself as a simple nun, and of which she was
+appointed first abbess by the Pope who reigned at the time.
+
+"There, madame," added the King, "is the somewhat singular origin of the
+illustrious abbey which your sister rules with such eclat.  You must have
+remarked the boar's head, perfectly imitated in sculpture, in the dome;
+that mask is the speaking history of the noble community of Fontevrault,
+where more than a hundred Benedictine monks obey an abbess."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Fine Couples Make Fine Children.--The Dauphine of Bavaria.--She
+Displeases Madame de Montespan.--First Debut Relating to Madame de
+Maintenon, Appointed Lady-in-waiting.--Conversation between the Two
+Marquises.
+
+
+The King, in his moments of effusion and abandonment (then so full of
+pleasantness), had said more than once: "If I have any physical beauty, I
+owe it to the Queen, my mother; if my daughters have any beauty, they owe
+it to me: it is only fine couples who get fine children."
+
+When I saw him decided upon marrying Monseigneur le Dauphin, I reminded
+him of his maxim.  He fell to smiling, and answered me: "Chance, too,
+sometimes works its miracles.  My choice for my son is a decided thing;
+my politics come before my taste, and I have asked for the daughter of
+the Elector of Bavaria, whose portrait I will show you.  She is not
+beautiful, like you; she is prettier than Benedicte, and I hope that she
+will not bite Monseigneur le Dauphin in her capricious transports."
+
+The portrait that the King showed me was a flattering one, as are, in
+general, all these preliminary samples.  For all that, the Princess
+seemed to me hideous, and even disagreeable, especially about her eyes,
+that portion of the face which confirms the physiognomy and decides
+everything.
+
+"Monseigneur will never love that woman," I said to the King.  "That
+constrained look in the pupil, those drooping eyes,--they make my heart
+ache."
+
+"My son, happily," his Majesty answered, "is not so difficult as you and
+I.  He has already seen this likeness, and at the second look he was
+taken; and as we have assured him that the young person is well made, he
+cries quits with her face, and proposes to love her as soon as he gets
+her."
+
+"God grant it!" I added; and the King told me, more or less in detail, of
+what important personages he was going to compose his household.  The
+eternal Abbe Bossuet was to become first chaplain, as being the
+tutor-in-chief to the Dauphin; the Duchesse de Richelieu, for her great
+name, was going to be lady of honour; and the two posts of ladies in
+waiting were destined for the Marquise de Rochefort, wife of the Marshal,
+and for Madame de Maintenon, ex-governess of the Duc du Maine.  The
+gesture of disapproval which escaped me gave his Majesty pain.
+
+"Why this air of contempt or aversion?"  he said, changing colour. "Is it
+to the Marechale de Rochefort or the Marquise de Maintenon that you
+object? I esteem both the one and the other, and I am sorry for you if
+you do not esteem them too."
+
+"The Marechale de Rochefort," I replied, without taking any fright, "is
+aged, and almost always sick; a lady of honour having her appearance will
+make a contrast with her office.  As to the other, she still has beauty
+and elegance; but do you imagine, Sire, that the Court of Bavaria and the
+Court of France have forgotten, in so short a time, the pleasant and
+burlesque name of the poet Scarron?"
+
+"Every one ought to forget what I have forgotten," replied the King, "and
+what my gratitude will not, and cannot forget, I am surprised that you,
+madame, should take pleasure in forgetting."
+
+"She has taken care of my children since the cradle, I admit it with
+pleasure," said I to his Majesty, without changing my tone; "you have
+given her a marquisate for recompense, and a superb hotel completely
+furnished at Versailles.  I do not see that she has any cause for
+complaint, nor that after such bounty there is more to add."
+
+"Of eight children that you have brought into the world, madame, she has
+reared and attended perfectly to six," replied the King.  "The estate of
+Maintenon has, at the most, recompensed the education of the Comtes de
+Vegin, whose childhood was so onerous.  And for the remainder of my
+little family, what have I yet done that deserves mention?"
+
+"Give her a second estate and money," I cried, quite out of patience,
+"since it is money which pays all services of that nature; but what need
+have you to raise her to great office, and keep her at Court?  She dotes,
+she says, on her old chateau of Maintenon; do not deprive her of this
+delight.  By making her lady in waiting, you would be disobliging her."
+
+"She will accept out of courtesy," he said to me, putting on an air of
+mockery.  And as the time for the Council was noted by him on my clock,
+he went away without adding more.
+
+Since M. le Duc du Maine had grown up, and Mademoiselle de Nantes had
+been confided to the Marquise de Montchevreuil, Madame de Maintenon
+continued to occupy her handsome apartment on the Princes' Court.  There
+she received innumerable visits, she paid assiduous court to the Queen,
+who had suddenly formed a taste for her, and took her on her walks and
+her visits to the communities; but this new Marquise saw me rarely. Since
+the affair of the vine-grower, killed on the road, she declared that I
+had insulted her before everybody, and that I had ordered her imperiously
+to return to my carriage, as though she had been a waiting-maid, or some
+other menial.  Her excessive sensibility readily afforded her this
+pretext, so that she neglected and visibly overlooked me.
+
+As she did not come to me, I betook myself to her at a tolerably early
+hour, before the flood of visitors, and started her on the history of the
+lady in waiting.
+
+"His Majesty has spoken of it to me," she said, "as of a thing possible;
+but I do not think there is anything settled yet in the matter."
+
+"Will you accept," I asked her, "supposing the King to insist?"
+
+"I should like a hundred times better," she replied, "to go and live in
+independence in my little kingdom of Maintenon, and with my own hands
+gather on my walls those velvet, brilliant peaches, which grow so fine in
+those districts.  But if the King commands me to remain at Court, and
+form our young Bavarian Princess in the manners of this country, have I
+the right, in good conscience, to refuse?"
+
+"Your long services have gained you the right to desire and take your
+retirement," I said to her; "in your place, I should insist upon the
+necessities of my health.  And the Court of France will not fall nor
+change its physiognomy, even if a German or Iroquois Dauphine should
+courtesy awry, or in bad taste."
+
+Madame de Maintenon began to laugh, and assured me that "her post as lady
+in waiting would be an actual burden, if the King had destined her for it
+in spite of herself, and there should be no means of withdrawing from
+it."
+
+At this speech I saw clearly that things were already fixed.  Not wishing
+to call upon me the reproaches of my lord, I carried the conversation no
+further.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The "Powder of Inheritance."--The Chambre Ardente.--The Comtesse de
+Soissons's Arrest Decreed.--The Marquise de Montespan Buys Her
+Superintendence of the Queen's Council.--Madame de Soubise.--Madame de
+Maintenon and the King.
+
+
+At the time of the poisonings committed by Madame de Brinvilliers, the
+Government obtained evidence that a powder, called "the powder of
+inheritance," was being sold in Paris, by means of which impatient heirs
+shortened the days of unfortunate holders, and entered into possession
+before their time.
+
+Two obscure women, called La Vigoureuse and La Voisine, were arrested,
+having been caught redhanded.  Submitted to the question, they confessed
+their crime, and mentioned several persons, whom they qualified as
+"having bought and made use of the said powder of inheritance."
+
+We saw suddenly the arrest of the Marechal de Luxembourg, the Princesse
+de Tingry, and many others.  The 'Chambre Ardente'--[The French Star
+Chamber.]--issued a warrant also to seize the person of the Duchesse de
+Bouillon and the Comtesse de Soissons, the celebrated nieces of the
+Cardinal Mazarin, sisters-in-law, both, of my niece De Nevers, who was
+dutifully afflicted thereby.
+
+The Comtesse de Soissons had possessed hitherto an important office,
+whose functions suited me in every respect,--that of the superintendence
+of the Queen's household and council.  I bought this post at a
+considerable price.  The Queen, who had never cared for the Countess, did
+me the honour of assuring me that she preferred me to the other, when I
+came to take my oath in her presence.
+
+Madame la Princesse de Rohan-Soubise had wished to supplant me at that
+time, and I was aware of her constant desire to obtain a fine post at
+Court.  She loved the King, who had shown her his favours in more than
+one circumstance; but, as she had a place neither in his esteem nor in
+his affection, I did not fear her.  I despatched to her, very adroitly, a
+person of her acquaintance, who spoke to her of the new household of a
+Dauphine, and gave her the idea of soliciting for herself the place of
+lady in waiting, destined for Madame de Maintenon.
+
+The Princesse de Soubise put herself immediately amongst the candidates.
+She wrote to the King, her friend, a pressing and affectionate letter, to
+which he did not even reply.  She wrote one next in a more majestic and
+appropriate style.  It was notified to her that she was forbidden to
+reappear at Court.
+
+The prince had resolutely taken his course.  He wished to put Madame de
+Maintenon in evidence, and what he has once decided he abandons never.
+
+I was soon aware that costumes of an unheard-of magnificence were being
+executed for the Marquise.  Gold, silver, precious stones abounded. I was
+offered a secret view of her robe of ceremony, with a long mantle train.
+I saw this extraordinarily rich garment, and was sorry in advance for the
+young stranger, whose lady in waiting could not fail to eclipse her in
+everything.
+
+I then put some questions to myself,--asked myself severely if my
+disapproval sprang from natural haughtiness, which would have been
+possible, and even excusable, or whether, mingled with all that, was some
+little agitation of jealousy and emulation.
+
+I collected together a crowd of slight and scattered circumstances; and
+in this union of several small facts, at first neglected and almost
+unperceived, I distinguished on the part of the King a gradual and
+increasing attachment for the governess, and at the same time a
+negligence in regard to me,--a coldness, a cooling-down, at least, and
+that sort of familiarity, close parent of weariness, which comes to sight
+in the midst of courtesies and attentions the most satisfying and the
+most frequent.
+
+The King, in the old days, never glanced towards my clock till as late as
+possible, and always at the last moment, at the last extremity.  Now he
+cast his eyes on it a score of times in half an hour.  He contradicted me
+about trifles.  He explained to me ingeniously the faults, or alleged
+faults, of my temper and character.  If it was a question of Madame de
+Maintenon, she was of a birth equal and almost superior to the rest of
+the Court.  He forgot himself so far as to quote before me the subtilty
+of her answers or the delight of her most intimate conversation.  Did he
+wish to describe a noble carriage, an attitude at once easy and
+distinguished, it was Madame de Maintenon's.  She possessed this, she
+possessed that, she possessed everything.
+
+Soon there was not the slightest doubt left to me; and I knew, as did the
+whole Court, that he openly visited the Marquise, and was glad to pass
+some moments there.
+
+These things, in truth, never lacked some plausible pretext, and he chose
+the time when Madame de Montchevreuil and Mademoiselle de Nantes were
+presenting their homages to Madame de Maintenon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Marie Louise, Daughter of Henrietta of England, Betrothed to the King of
+Spain.--Her Affliction.--Jealousy of the King, Her Husband.
+
+
+The unfortunate lady, Henrietta of England, had left, at her death, two
+extremely young girls, one of them, indeed, being still in the cradle.
+The new Madame was seized with good-will for these two orphans to such an
+extent as to complain to the King.  They were brought up with the
+greatest care; they were, both of them, pretty and charming.
+
+The elder was named Marie Louise.  It was this one whom Monsieur destined
+in his own mind for Monseigneur le Dauphin; and the Princess, accustomed
+early to this prospect, had insensibly adapted to it her mind and hope.
+Young, beautiful, agreeable, and charming as her mother, she created
+already the keenest sensation at Court, and the King felt an inclination
+to cherish her as much as he had loved Madame.  But the excessive freedom
+which this alliance would not have failed to give his brother, both with
+his son-in-law and nephew, and with the Ministry, prevented his Majesty
+from giving way to this penchunt for Marie Louise.  On the contrary, he
+consented to her marriage with the King of Spain, and the news of it was
+accordingly carried to Monsieur le Duc d'Orleans.  He and his wife felt
+much annoyance at it.  But after communications of that kind there was
+scarcely any course open to be taken than that of acquiescence.  Monsieur
+conveyed the news to his beloved daughter, and, on hearing that she was
+to be made Queen of Spain, this amiable child uttered loud lamentations.
+
+When she went to Versailles to thank the King, her uncle, her fine eyes
+were still suffused with tears.  The few words which she uttered were
+mingled with sighing and weeping; and when she saw the indifference of
+her cousin, who felicitated her like the rest, she almost fainted with
+grief and regret.
+
+"My dear cousin," said this dull-witted young lord, "I shall count the
+hours until you go to Spain.  You will send me some 'touru', for I am
+very fond of it?"
+
+The King could not but find this reflection of his son very silly and out
+of place.  But intelligence is neither to be given nor communicated by
+example.  His Majesty had to support to the end this son, legitimate as
+much as you like, but altogether in degree, and with a person which
+formed a perpetual contrast with the person of the King.  It was my Duc
+du Maine who should have been in the eminent position of Monseigneur.
+Nature willed it so.  She had proved it sufficiently by lavishing all her
+favours on him, all her graces; but the laws of convention and usage
+would not have it.  His Majesty has made this same reflection, groaning,
+more than once.
+
+Marie Louise, having been married by proxy, in the great Chapel of Saint
+Germain, where the Cardinal de Bouillon blessed the ring in his quality
+of Grand Almoner of France, left for that Spain which her young heart
+distrusted.
+
+Her beauty and charms rendered her precious to the monarch, utterly
+melancholy and devout as he was.  He did not delay subjecting her to the
+wretched, petty, tiresome, and absurd etiquette of that Gothic Court.
+Mademoiselle submitted to all these nothings, seeing she had been able to
+submit to separation from France.  She condemned herself to the most
+fastidious observances and the most sore privations, which did not much
+ameliorate her lot.
+
+A young Castilian lord, almost mad himself, thought fit to find this
+Queen pretty, and publicly testify his love for her.  The jealousy of the
+religious King flared up like a funeral torch.  He conceived a hatred of
+his wife, reserved and innocent though she was.  She died cruelly by
+poison.  And Monseigneur le Dauphin probably cried, after his manner:
+
+"What a great pity!  She won't send me the touru!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+The Dauphine of Bavaria.--The Confessor with Spurs.--Madame de Maintenon
+Disputes with Bossuet.--He Opposes to Her Past Ages and History.--The
+Military Absolution.
+
+
+Eight months after the wedding of Marie Louise, we witnessed the arrival
+of Anne Marie Christine, Princess of Bavaria, daughter of the Elector
+Ferdinand.  The King and Monseigneur went to receive her at
+Vitry-le-Francais, and then escorted her to Chalons, where the Queen was
+awaiting her.
+
+The Cardinal de Bouillon celebrated the marriage in the cathedral church
+of this third-class town.  The festivities and jubilations there lasted a
+week.
+
+The King had been very willing to charge me with the arrangement of the
+baskets of presents destined for the Dauphine; I acquitted myself of this
+commission with French taste and a sentiment of what was proper.  When
+the Queen saw all these magnificent gifts placed and spread out in a
+gallery, she cried out, and said:
+
+"Things were not done so nobly for me; and yet, I can say without vanity,
+I was of a better house than she."
+
+This remark paints the Queen, Maria Theresa, better than anything which
+could be said.  Can one wonder, after that, that she should have brought
+into the world an hereditary prince who so keenly loves 'touru', and asks
+for it!
+
+Madame de Maintenon and M. Bossuet had gone to receive the Princess of
+Schelestadt.  When she was on her husband's territory, and it was
+necessary, to confess her for the sacrament of matrimony, she was
+strangely embarrassed.  They had not remembered to bring a chaplain of
+her own nation for her; and she could not confess except in the German
+tongue.
+
+Madame de Maintenon, who is skilled in all matters of religion, said to
+the prelate: "I really think, monsieur, that, having educated Monsieur le
+Dauphin, you ought to know a little German,--you who have composed the
+treatise on universal history."
+
+The Bishop of Meaux excused himself, saying that he knew Greek, Syriac,
+and even Hebrew; but that, through a fatality, he was ignorant of the
+German language.  A trumpeter was then sent out to ask if there was not
+in the country a Catholic priest who was a German, or acquainted with the
+German tongue.  Luckily one was found, and Madame de Maintenon, who is
+very, pedantic, even in the matter of toilet and ornaments, trembled with
+joy and thanked God for it.  But what was her astonishment when they came
+to bring her the priest!  He was in coloured clothes, a silk doublet,
+flowing peruke, and boots and spurs.  The lady in waiting rated him
+severely, and was tempted to send him back.  But Bossuet--a far greater
+casuist than she--decided that in these urgent cases one need hold much
+less to forms.  They were contented with taking away the spurs from this
+amphibious personage; they pushed him into a confessional,--the curtain
+of which he was careful to draw before himself,--and they brought the
+Bavarian Princess, who, not knowing the circumstances, confessed the sins
+of her whole life to this sort of soldier.
+
+Madame de Maintenon always had this general confession on her conscience;
+she scolded Bossuet for it as a sort of sacrilege, and the latter, who
+was only difficult and particular with simple folk, quoted historical
+examples in which soldiers, on the eve of battle, had confessed to their
+general.
+
+"Yes," said the King, on hearing these quotations from the imperturbable
+man; "that must have been to the Bishop of Puy or the Bishop of Orange,
+who, in effect, donned the shield and cuirass at the time of the crusades
+against the Saracens; or perhaps, again, to the Cardinal de la Valette
+d'Epernon, who commanded our armies under Richelieu successfully."
+
+"No, Sire," replied the Bishop; "to generals who were simply soldiers."
+
+"But," said the King, "were the confessions, then, null?"
+
+"Sire," added the Bishop of Meaux, "circumstances decide everything. Of
+old, in the time of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and much later still,
+confessions of Christians were public,--made in a loud voice; sometimes a
+number together, and always in the open air.  Those of soldiers that I
+have quoted to madame were somewhat of the kind of these confessions of
+the primitive Church; and to-day, still, at the moment when battle is
+announced, a military almoner gives the signal for confession.  The
+regiments confess on their knees before the Most High, who hears them;
+and the almoner, raised aloft on a pile of drums, holds the crucifix in
+one hand, and with the other gives the general absolution to eighty
+thousand soldiers at once."
+
+This clear and precise explanation somewhat calmed Madame de Maintenon,
+and Madame la Dauphine,--displeased at what she had done on arriving,--in
+order to be regular, learned to confess in French.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Pere de la Chaise.--The Jesuits.--The Pavilion of Belleville.--The
+Handkerchief.
+
+
+Pere de la Chaise has never done me good or ill; I have no motives for
+conciliating him, no reason to slander him.  I am ignorant if he were the
+least in the world concerned, at the epoch of the Grand Jubilee, with
+those ecclesiastical attempts of which Bossuet had constituted himself
+spokesman.  Pere de la Chaise has in his favour a great evenness of
+temper and character; an excellent tone, which comes to him from his
+birth; a conciliatory philosophy, which renders him always master of his
+condition and of his metier.  He is, in a single individual, the happy
+combination of several men, that is to say, he is by turns, and as it may
+be needful, a man indulgent or severe in his preaching; a man of
+abstinence, or a good feeder; a man of the world, or a cenobite; a man of
+his breviary, or a courtier.  He knows that the sins of woodcutters and
+the sins of kings are not of the same family, and that copper and gold
+are not weighed in the same scales.
+
+He is a Jesuit by his garb; he is much more so than they are by his
+'savoir-vivre'.  His companions love the King because he is the King; he
+loves him, and pities him because he sees his weakness.  He shows for his
+penitent the circumspection and tenderness of a father, and in the long
+run he has made of him a spoiled child.
+
+This Pere de la Chaise fell suddenly ill, and with symptoms so alarming
+that the cabals each wished to appropriate this essential post of
+confessor.
+
+The Jansenists would have been quite willing to lay hold of it.  The
+Jesuits, and principally the cordons bleus, did not quit the pillow of
+the sick man for an instant.
+
+The King had himself informed of his condition every half-hour.  There
+was a bulletin, as there is for potentates.  One evening, when the
+doctors were grave on his account, I saw anxiety and affliction painted
+on the visage of his Majesty.
+
+"Where shall I find his like?"  said he to me.  "Where shall I find such
+knowledge, such indulgence, such kindness?  The Pere de la Chaise knew
+the bottom of my heart; he knew, as an intelligent man, how to reconcile
+religion with nature; and when duty brings me to the foot of his
+tribunal, as a humble Christian, he never forgets that royalty, cannot be
+long on its knees, and he accompanies with his attentions and with
+deference the religious commands which he is bound to impose on me."
+
+"I hope that God will preserve him to you," I replied to his Majesty;
+"but let us suppose the case in which this useful and precious man should
+see his career come to an end; will you grant still this mark of
+confidence and favour to the Jesuits?  All the French being your
+subjects, would it not be fitting to grant this distinction sometimes to
+the one and sometimes to the other?  You would, perhaps, extinguish by
+this that hate or animosity by which the Jesuits see themselves assailed,
+which your preference draws upon them."
+
+"I do not love the Jesuits with that affection that you seem to suggest,"
+replied the monarch.  "I look upon them as men of instruction, as a
+learned and well-governed corporation; but as for their attachment for
+me, I know how to estimate it.  This kind of people, strangers to the
+soft emotions of nature, have no affection or love for anything.  Before
+the triumph of the King my grandfather, they intrigued and exerted
+themselves to bring about his fall; he opened the gates of Paris, and the
+Jesuits, like the Capuchins, at once recognised him and bowed down before
+him.  King Henri, who knew what men are, pretended to forget the past; he
+pronounced himself decidedly in favour of the Jesuits because this body
+of teachers, numerous, rich, and of good credit, had just pronounced
+itself in favour of him.
+
+"It was, then, a reconciliation between power and power, and the politics
+of my grandfather were to survive him and become mine, since the same
+elements exist and I am encamped on the same ground.  If God takes away
+from me my poor Pere de la Chaise, I shall feel this misfortune deeply,
+because I shall lose in him, not a Jesuit, not a priest, but a good
+companion, a trusty and proved friend.  If I lose him, I shall assuredly
+be inconsolable for him; but it will be very necessary for me to take his
+successor from the Grand Monastery of the Rue Saint Antoine.  This
+community knows me by heart, and I do not like innovations."
+
+The successor of the Pere de la Chaise was already settled with the
+Jesuit Fathers; but this man of the vanguard was spared marching and
+meeting danger.  The Court was not condemned to see and salute a new
+face; the old confessor recovered his health.  His Majesty experienced a
+veritable joy at it, a joy as real as if the Prince of Orange had died.
+
+Wishing to prove to the good convalescent how dear his preservation was
+to him, the King released him from his function for the rest of the year,
+and begged him to watch over his health, the most important of his duties
+and his possessions.
+
+Having learnt that they had neither terraces nor gardens at the grand
+monastery of the Rue Saint Antoine, his Majesty made a present to his
+confessor of a very agreeable house in the district of Belleville, and
+caused to be transported thither all kinds of orange-trees, rare shrubs,
+and flowers from Versailles.  These tasteful attentions, these filial
+cares, diverted the capital somewhat; but Paris is a rich soil, where the
+strangest things are easily received and naturalised without an effort.
+
+The Pare de la Chaise had his chariot with his arms on it, and his family
+livery; and as the income from his benefices remained to him, joined to
+his office of confessor, he continued to have every day a numerous court
+of young abbes, priests well on in years, barons, countesses, marquises,
+magistrates and colonels, who came to Belleville in anxiety about his
+health, to congratulate themselves upon his convalescence, to ask of him,
+with submission and reverence, a bishopric, an archbishopric, a
+cardinal's hat, an important priory, a canonry, or an abbey.
+
+Having myself to place the three daughters of one of my relatives, I went
+to see the noble confessor at his pavilion of Belleville.  He received me
+with the most marked distinction, and was lavish in acts of gratitude for
+all the benefits of the King.
+
+As he crossed his salon, in order to accompany me and escort me out, he
+let his white handkerchief fall; three bishops at once flung themselves
+upon it, and there was a struggle as to who should pick it up to give it
+back to him.
+
+I related to the King what I had seen.  He said to me: "These prelates
+honour my confessor, looking upon him as a second me."  In fact, the sins
+of the King could only throw his confessor into relief and add to his
+merit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Mademoiselle de Fontanges.--The Pavilions of the Garden of Flora.--Rapid
+Triumph of the Favourite.--Her Retreat to Val-de-grace.--Her Death.
+
+
+Madame de Maintenon was already forty-four years old, and appeared to be
+only thirty.  This freshness, that she owed either to painstaking care or
+to her happy and quite peculiar constitution, gave her that air of youth
+which fascinated the eyes of the courtiers and those of the monarch
+himself.  I wished one day to annoy her by bringing the conversation on
+this subject, which could not be diverting to her.  I began by putting
+the question generally, and I then named several of our superannuated
+beauties who still fluttered in the smiling gardens of Flora without
+having the youth of butterflies.
+
+"There are butterflies of every age and colour in the gardens of Flora,"
+said she, catching the ball on the rebound.  "There are presumptuous
+ones, whom the first breath of the zephyr despoils of their plumage and
+discolours; others, more reserved and less frivolous, keep their glamour
+and prestige for a much longer time.  For the rest, the latter seem to me
+to rejoice without being vain in their advantages.  And at bottom, what
+should any insect gain by being proud?"
+
+"Very little," I answered her, "since being dressed as a butterfly does
+not prevent one from being an insect, and the best sustained preservation
+lasts at most till the day after to-morrow."
+
+The King entered.  I started speaking of a young person, extremely
+beautiful, who had just appeared at Court, and would eclipse, in my
+opinion, all who had shone there before her.
+
+"What do you call her?"  asked his Majesty.  "To what family does she
+belong?"
+
+"She comes from the provinces," I continued, "just like silk, silver, and
+gold.  Her parents desire to place her among the maids of honour of the
+Queen.  Her name is Fontanges, and God has never made anything so
+beautiful."
+
+As I said these words I watched the face of the Marquise.  She listened
+to this portrayal with attention, but without appearing moved by it, such
+is her power of suppressing her natural feeling.  The King only added
+these words:
+
+"This young person needs be quite extraordinary, since Madame de
+Montespan praises her, and praises her with so much vivacity.  However,
+we shall see."
+
+Two days afterwards, Mademoiselle de Fontanges was seen in the salon of
+the grand table.  The King, in spite of his composure, had looks and
+attentions for no one else.
+
+This excessive preoccupation struck the Queen, who, marking the
+blandishments of the young coquette and the King's response, guessed the
+whole future of this encounter; and in her heart was almost glad at it,
+seeing that my turn had come.
+
+Mademoiselle de Fontanges, given to the King by her shameless family,
+feigned love and passion for the monarch, as though he had returned by
+enchantment to his twentieth year.
+
+As for him, he too appeared to us to forget all dates.  I know that he
+was only now forty-one years old, and having been the finest man in the
+world, he could not but preserve agreeable vestiges of a once striking
+beauty.  But his young conquest had hardly entered on her eighteenth
+year, and this difference could not fail to be plain to the most
+inattentive, or most indulgent eyes.
+
+The King, with a sort of anticipatory resignation, had for six or seven
+years greatly simplified his appearance.  We had seen him, little by
+little, reform that Spanish and chivalric costume with which he once
+embellished his first loves.  The flowing plumes no longer floated over
+his forehead, which had become pensive and quite serious.  The diagonal,
+scarf was suppressed, and the long boots, with gold and silver
+embroidery, were no longer seen.  To please his new divinity, the monarch
+suddenly enough rejuvenated his attire.  The most elegant stuffs became
+the substance of his garments; feathers reappeared.  He joined to them
+emeralds and diamonds.
+
+Allegorical comedies, concerts on the waters recommenced.  Triumphant
+horse-races set the whole Court abob and in movement.  There was a fresh
+carousal; there was all that resembles the enthusiasms of youthful
+affection, and the deliriums of youth.  The youth alone was not there, at
+least in proportion, assortment, and similarity.
+
+All that I was soliciting for twelve years, Mademoiselle de Fontanges had
+only to desire for a week.  She was created duchess at her debut; and the
+lozenge of her escutcheon was of a sudden adorned with a ducal coronet,
+and a peer's mantle.
+
+I did not deign to pay attention to this outrage; at least, I made a
+formal resolution never to say a single word on it.
+
+The King came no less from time to time, to pay me a visit, and to talk
+to me, as of old, of operas and his hunting.  I endured his conversation
+with a philosophical phlegm.  He scarcely suspected the change in me.
+
+At the chase, one day, his nymph, whom nothing could stop, had her knot
+of riband caught and held by a branch; the royal lover compelled the
+branch to restore the knot, and went and offered it to his Amazon.
+Singular and sparkling, although lacking in intelligence, she carried
+herself this knot of riband to the top of her hair, and fixed it there
+with a long pin.
+
+Fortune willed it that this coiffure, without order or arrangement,
+suited her face, and suited it greatly.  The King was the first to
+congratulate her on it; all the courtiers applauded it, and this coiffure
+of the chase became the fashion of the day.
+
+All the ladies, and the Queen herself, found themselves obliged to adopt
+it.  Madame de Maintenon submitted herself to it, like the others.  I
+alone refused to sacrifice to the idol, and my knee, being once more
+painful, would not bend before Baal.
+
+With the exception of the general duties of the sovereignty, the prince
+appeared to have forgotten everything for his flame.  The Pere de la
+Chaise, who had returned to his post, regarded this fresh incident with
+his philosophic calm, and congratulated himself on seeing the monarch
+healed of at least one of his passions.
+
+I had always taken the greatest care to respect the Queen; and since my
+star condemned me to stand in her shoes, I did not spare myself the
+general attentions which two well-born people owe one another, and which,
+at least, prove a lofty education.
+
+The Duchesse de Fontanges, doubtless, believed herself Queen, because she
+had the public homage and the King.  This imprudent and conceited
+schoolgirl had the face to pass before her sovereign without stopping,
+and without troubling to courtesy.
+
+The Infanta reddened with disapproval, and persuaded herself, by way of
+consolation, that Fontanges had lost her senses or was on the road to
+madness.
+
+Beautiful and brilliant as the flowers, the Duchess, like them, passed
+swiftly away.  Her pregnancy, by reason of toilsome rides, hunting
+parties, and other agitations, became complicated.  From the eighth month
+she fell into a fever, into exhaustion and languor.  The terror that took
+possession of her imagination caused her to desire a sojourn in a convent
+as a refuge of health, where God would see her nearer and, perhaps, come
+to her aid.
+
+She had herself transported during the night to the House of the Ladies
+of Val-de-Grace, and desired that they should place in her chamber
+several relics from their altars.
+
+Her confinement was not less laboured and sinister.  When she saw that
+all the assistance of art could not stop the bleeding, with which her
+deep bed was flooded, she caused the King to be summoned, embraced him
+tenderly, in the midst of sobs and tears, and died in the night,
+pronouncing the name of God and the name of the King, the objects of her
+love and of fears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Madame de Sevigne.--Madame de Grignan.--Madame de Montespan at the
+Carmelites.--Madame de la Valliere.--These Two Great Ruins Console One
+Another.--An Angel of Sweetness, Goodness, and Kindness.
+
+
+Fifteen or twenty days before the death of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, my
+sister and I were taking a walk in the new woods of Versailles.  We met
+the Marquise de Sevigne near the canal; she was showing these marvellous
+constructions to her daughter, the Comtesse de Grignan.  They greeted us
+with their charming amiability, and, after having spoken of several
+indifferent matters, the Marquise said to me: "We saw, five or six days
+ago, a person, madame, of whom you were formerly very fond, and who
+charged us to recall her to the memory of her friends.  You are still of
+that number,--I like to think so, and our commission holds good where you
+are concerned, if you will allow it."
+
+Then she mentioned to me that poor Duchesse de la Valliere, to whom I was
+once compelled by my unhappy star to give umbrage, and whom, in my fatal
+thoughtlessness, I had afflicted without desiring it.
+
+Tears came into my eyes; Madame de Sevigne saw them, and expressed her
+regret at having caused me pain.  Madame de Thianges and I asked her if
+my old friend was much changed.  She and Madame de Grignan assured us
+that she was fresh, in good health, and that her face appeared more
+beautiful.  On the next day I wished absolutely to see her, and drove to
+the Carmelites.
+
+On seeing my pretty cripple, who hobbled among us with so great a charm,
+I uttered a cry, which for a moment troubled her.  She sank down to
+salute the crucifix, as custom demands, and, after her short prayer, she
+came to me.  "I did not mention your name to Mesdames de Sevigne," said
+she; "but, however, I am obliged to them, since they have been able to
+procure me the pleasure of seeing you once more."
+
+"The general opinion of the Court, and in the world, my dear Duchess,"
+answered I, "is that I brought about your disgrace myself; and the
+public, that loved you, has not ceased to reproach me with your
+misfortune."
+
+"The public is very kind still to occupy itself with me," she answered;
+"but it is wrong in that, as in so many other matters.  My retirement
+from the world is not a misfortune, and I never suspected that the soul
+could find such peace and satisfaction in these silent solitudes.
+
+"The first days were painful to me, I admit it, owing to the
+inexpressible difference which struck me between what I found here and
+what I had left elsewhere.  But just as the eye accustoms itself, little
+by little, to the feeble glimmer of a vault, in the same way my body has
+accustomed itself to the roughness of my new existence, and my heart to
+all its great privations.
+
+"If life had not to finish, in fulfilment of a solemn, universal, and
+inevitable decree, the constraint that I have put upon myself might at
+length become oppressive, and my yoke prove somewhat heavy.  But all that
+will finish soon, for all undertakings come to an end.  I left you young,
+beautiful, adored, and triumphant in the land of enchantments.  But six
+years have passed, and they assure me that your own afflictions have
+come, and that you, yourself, have been forced to drink the bitter cup of
+deprivation."
+
+At these words, pronounced in a melancholy and celestial voice, I felt as
+though my heart were broken, and burst into tears.
+
+"I pity you, Athenais," she resumed.  "Is, then, what I have been told
+lightly, and almost in haste, only too certain for you?  How is it you
+did not expect it?  How could you believe him constant and immutable,
+after what happened to me?
+
+"To-day, I make no secret to you of it, and I say it with the peaceful
+indifference which God has generously granted me, after such dolorous
+tribulations.  I make no secret of it to you, Athenais; a thousand times
+you plunged the sword and dagger into my heart, when, profiting by my
+confidence in you, by my sense of entire security, you permitted your own
+inclination to substitute itself for mine, and a young man seething with
+desires to be attracted by your charms.  These unlimited sufferings
+exhausted, I must believe, all the sensibility of my soul.  And when this
+corrosive flame had completely devoured my grief, a new existence grew up
+in me; I no longer saw in the father of my children other than a young
+prince, accustomed to see his dominating will fulfilled in everything.
+Knowing how little in this matter he is master of himself, he who knows
+so well how to be master of himself in everything to do with his numerous
+inferiors, I deplored the facility he enjoys from his attractions, from
+his wealth, from his power to dazzle the hearts which he desires to move
+and subdue.
+
+"Recognise these truths, my dear Marquise," she added, "and gain, for it
+is time, a just idea of your position.  After the unhappiness I felt at
+being loved no longer, I should have quitted the Court that very instant,
+if I had been permitted to bring up and tend my poor children.  They were
+too young to abandon!  I stayed still in the midst of you, as the swallow
+hovers and flits among the smoke of the fire, in order to watch over and
+save her little ones.  Do not wait till disdain or authority mingles in
+the matter.  Do not come to the sad necessity of resisting a monarch, and
+of detesting to the point of scandal that which you have so publicly
+loved; pity him, but depart.  This kind of intimacy, once broken, cannot
+be renewed.  However skilfully it may be patched up, the rent always
+reappears."
+
+"My good Louise," I replied to the amiable Carmelite, "your wise counsels
+touch me, persuade me, and are nothing but the truth.  But in listening
+to you I feel overwhelmed; and that strength which you knew how to gain,
+and show to the world, your former companion will never possess.
+
+"I see with astonished eyes the supernatural calm which reigns in your
+countenance; your health seems to me a prodigy, your beauty was never so
+ravishing; but this barbarous garb pierces me to the heart.
+
+"The King does not yet hate me; he shows me even a remnant of respect,
+with which he would colour his indifference.  Permit me to ask from him
+for you an abbey like that of Fontevrault, where the felicities of
+sanctuary and of the world are all in the power of my sister.  He will
+ask nothing better than to take you out, be assured."
+
+"Speak to him of me," answered Louise; "I do not oppose that; but leave
+me until the end the role of obedience and humility that his fault and
+mine impose on me.  Why should he wish that I should command others,--I
+who did not know how to command myself at an epoch when my innocence was
+so dear to me, and when I knew that, in losing that, one is lost?"
+
+As she said these words two nuns came to announce her Serene Highness,
+that is to say, her daughter, the Princesse de Conti.  I prayed Madame de
+la Valliere to keep between ourselves the communications that had just
+taken place in the intimacy of confidence.  She promised me with her
+usual candour.  I made a profound reverence to the daughter, embraced the
+mother weeping, and regained my carriage, which the Princess must have
+remarked on entering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Reflections.--The Future.--The Refuge of Foresight.--Community of Saint
+Joseph.--Wicked Saying of Bossuet.
+
+
+I wept much during the journey; and to save the spectacle of my grief
+from the passers-by, I was at the pains to lower the curtains.  I passed
+over in my mind all that the Duchess had said to me.  It was very easy
+for me to understand that the monarch's heart had escaped me, and that,
+owing to his character, all resistance, all contradiction would be vain.
+The figure, as it had been supernumerary and on sufferance, which the
+Duchess had made in the midst of the Court when she ceased to be loved,
+returned to my memory completely, and I felt I had not the courage to
+drink a similar cup of humiliation.
+
+I reminded myself of what the prince had told me several times in those
+days when his keen affection for me led him to wish for my happiness,
+even in the future,--even after his death, if I were destined to survive
+him.
+
+"You ought," he said to me, at those moments, "you ought to choose and
+assure yourself beforehand of an honourable retreat; for it is rarely
+that a king accords his respect or his good-will to the beloved
+confidante of his predecessor."
+
+Not wishing to ask a refuge of any one, but, on the contrary, being
+greatly set upon ruling in my own house, I resolved to build myself, not
+a formal convent like Val-de-Grace or Fontevrault, but a pretty little
+community, whose nuns, few in number, would owe me their entire
+existence, which would necessarily attach them to all my interests. I
+held to this idea.  I charged my intendant to seek for me a site spacious
+enough for my enterprise; and when he had found it, had showed it to me,
+and had satisfied me with it, I had what rambling buildings there were
+pulled down, and began, with a sort of joy, the excavations and
+foundations.
+
+The first blow of the hammer was struck, by some inconceivable fortuity,
+at the moment when the Duchesse de Fontanges expired.  Her death did not
+weaken my resolutions nor slacken my ardour.  I got away quite often to
+cast an eye over the work, and ordered my architect to second my
+impatience and spur on the numerous workmen.
+
+The rumour was current in Paris that the example of "Soeur Louise" had
+touched me, and that I was going to take the veil in my convent.  I took
+no notice of this fickle public, and persisted wisely in my plan.
+
+The unexpected and almost sudden decease of Mademoiselle de Fontanges had
+singularly moved the King.  Extraordinary and almost incredible to
+relate, he was for a whole week absent from the Council.  His eyes had
+shed so many tears that they were swollen and unrecognisable.  He shunned
+the occasions when there was an assembly, buried himself in his private
+apartments or in his groves, and resembled, in every trait, Orpheus
+weeping for his fair Eurydice, and refusing to be consoled.
+
+I should be false to others and to myself if I were to say that his
+extreme grief excited my compassion; but I should equally belie the truth
+if I gave it to be understood that his "widowhood" gave me pleasure, and
+that I congratulated myself on his sorrow and bitterness.
+
+He came to see me when he found himself presentable, and, for the first
+few days, I abstained from all reprisal and any allusion.  The
+innumerable labours of his State soon threw him, in spite of himself,
+into those manifold distractions which, in their nature, despise or
+absorb the sensibilities of the soul.  He resumed, little by little, his
+accustomed serenity, and, at the end of the month, appeared to have got
+over it.
+
+"What," he asked me, "are those buildings with which you are busy in
+Paris, opposite the Ladies of Belle-Chasse?  I hear of a convent; is it
+your intention to retire?"
+
+"It is a 'refuge of foresight,'" I answered him.  "Who can count upon the
+morrow?  And after what has befallen Mademoiselle de Fontanges, we must
+consider ourselves as persons already numbered, who wait only for the
+call."
+
+He sighed, and soon spoke of something else.
+
+I reminded myself that, to speak correctly, I had in Paris no habitation
+worthy of my children and of my quality.  That little hotel in the Rue
+Saint Andre-des-Arcs I could count for no more than a little box. I
+sought amongst my papers for a design of a magnificent hotel which I had
+obtained from the famous Blondel.  I found it without difficulty, with
+full elevations and sections.  The artist had adroitly imitated in it the
+beautiful architecture of the Louvre; this fair palace would suit me in
+every respect.
+
+My architect, at a cursory glance, judged that the construction and
+completion of this edifice would easily cost as much as eighteen hundred
+thousand livres.  This expense being no more than I could afford, I
+commissioned him to choose me a spacious site for the buildings and
+gardens over by Roule and La Pepiniere.
+
+Not caring to superintend several undertakings at once, I desired, before
+everything, that my house in the Faubourg Saint Germain should be
+complete and when the building and the chapel were in a condition to
+receive the little colony, I dedicated my "refuge of foresight" to Saint
+Joseph, the respectful spouse of the Holy Virgin and foster-father of the
+Child Jesus.  This agreeable mansion lacked a large garden.  I felt a
+sensible regret for this, especially for the sake of my inmates; but
+there was a little open space furnished with vines and fruit-walls, and
+one of the largest courtyards in the whole of the Faubourg Saint Germain.
+
+Having always loved society, I had multiplied in the two principal blocks
+of the sleeping-rooms and the entrance-hall complete apartments for the
+lady inmates.  And a proof that I was neither detested by the world nor
+unconsidered is that all these apartments were sought after and occupied
+as soon as the windows were put in and the painting done.  My own
+apartment was simple, but of a majestic dignity.  It communicated with
+the chapel, where my tribune, closed with a handsome window, was in face
+of the altar.
+
+I decided, once for all, that the Superior should be my nomination whilst
+God should leave me in this world, but that this right should not pass on
+to my heirs.  The bell of honour rang for twenty minutes every time I
+paid a visit to these ladies; and I only had incense at high mass, and at
+the Magnificat, in my quality of foundress.
+
+I went from time to time to make retreats, or, to be more accurate,
+vacations, in my House of Saint Joseph.  M. Bossuet solicited the favour
+of being allowed to preach there on the day of the solemn consecration. I
+begged him to preserve himself for my funeral oration.  He answered
+cruelly that there was nothing he could refuse me.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Grow like a dilapidated house; I am only here to repair myself
+He contradicted me about trifles
+Intimacy, once broken, cannot be renewed
+Jealous without motive, and almost without love
+The King replied that "too much was too much"
+The monarch suddenly enough rejuvenated his attire
+There is an exaggeration in your sorrow
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, v5
+#5 in our series by Madame La Marquise De Montespan
+#14 in our series Historic Court Memoirs
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+Title: The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, v5
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+Author: Madame La Marquise De Montespan
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+
+MEMOIRS OF MADAME LA MARQUISE DE MONTESPAN, v5
+
+Written by Herself
+
+Being the Historic Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV.
+
+
+
+BOOK 5.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The Prince de Mont-Beliard.--He Agrees to the Propositions Made Him.--
+The King's Note.--Diplomacy of the Chancellor of England.--Letter from
+the Marquis de Montespan.--The Duchy in the Air.--The Domain of Navarre,
+Belonging to the Prince de Bouillon, Promised to the Marquise.
+
+There was but a small company this year at the Waters of Bourbonne,--
+to begin with, at any rate; for afterwards there appeared to be many
+arrivals, to see me, probably, and Mademoiselle de Nantes.
+
+The Chancellor Hyde was already installed there, and his establishment
+was one of the most agreeable and convenient; he was kind enough to
+exchange it for mine.  A few days afterwards he informed me of the
+arrival of the Prince de Mont-Beliard, of Wurtemberg, who was anxious to
+pay his respects to me, as though to the King's daughter.  In effect,
+this royal prince came and paid me a visit; I thought him greatly changed
+for such a short lapse of years.
+
+We had seen each other--as, I believe, I have already told--at the time
+of the King's first journey in Flanders.  He recalled all the
+circumstances to me, and was amiable enough to tell me that, instead of
+waning, my beauty had increased.
+
+"It is you, Prince, who embellish everything," I answered him.  "I begin
+to grow like a dilapidated house; I am only here to repair myself."
+
+Less than a year before, M. de Mont-Billiard had lost that amiable
+princess, his wife; he had a lively sense of this loss, and never spoke
+of it without tears in his eyes.
+
+"You know, madame," he told me, "my states are, at present, not entirely
+administered, but occupied throughout by the officers of the King of
+France.  Those persons who have my interests at heart, as well as those
+who delight at my fears, seem persuaded that this provisional occupation
+will shortly become permanent.  I dare not question you on this subject,
+knowing how much discretion is required of you; but I confess that I
+should pass quieter and more tranquil nights if you could reassure me up
+to a certain point."
+
+"Prince," I replied to him, "the King is never harsh except with those of
+whom he has had reason to complain.  M. le Duc de Neubourg, and certain
+other of the Rhine princes, have been thick-witted enough to be disloyal
+to him; he has punished them for it, as Caesar did, and as all great
+princes after him will do.  But you have never shown him either coldness,
+or aversion, or indifference.  He has commanded the Marechal de
+Luxembourg to enter your territory to prevent the Prince of Orange from
+reaching there before us, and your authority has been put, not under the
+domination, but under the protection, of the King of France, who is
+desirous of being able to pass from there into the Brisgau."
+
+Madame de Thianges, Madame de Nevers, and myself did all that lay in our
+power to distract or relieve the sorrows of the Prince; but the loss of
+Mademoiselle de Chatillon, his charming spouse, was much more present
+with him than that of his states; the bitterness which he drew from it
+was out of the retch of all consolation possible.  The Marquise de
+Thianges procured the Chancellor of England to approach the Prince, and
+find out from him, to a certain extent, whether he would consent to
+exchange the County of Mont-Beliard for some magnificent estates in
+France, to which some millions in money would be added.
+
+M. de Wurtemberg asked for a few days in which to reflect, and imagining
+that these suggestions emanated from Versailles, he replied that he could
+refuse nothing to the greatest of kings.  My sister wrote on the day
+following to the Marquis de Louvois, instead of asking it of the King in
+person.  M. de Luvois, who, probably, wished to despoil M. de Mont-
+Beliard without undoing his purse-strings, put this overture before the
+King maliciously, and the King wrote me immediately the following letter:
+
+     Leave M. de Mont-Beliard alone, and do not speak to him again of his
+     estates.  If the matter which occupies Madame de Thianges could be
+     arranged, it would be of the utmost propriety that a principality of
+     such importance rested in the Crown, at least as far as sovereignty.
+     The case of the Principality of Orange is a good enough lesson to
+     me; there must be one ruler only in an empire.  As for you, my dear
+     lady, feel no regret for all that.  You shall be a duchess, and I am
+     pleased to give you this title which you desire.  Let M. de
+     Montespan be informed that his marquisate is to be elevated into a
+     duchy with a peerage, and that I will add to it the number of
+     seigniories that is proper, as I do not wish to deviate from the
+     usage which has become a law, etc.
+
+The prince's decision was definite, and as his character was, there was
+no wavering.  I wrote to him immediately to express my lively gratitude,
+and we considered, the Marquise and I, as to the intermediary to whom we
+could entrust the unsavoury commission of approaching the Marquis de
+Montespan.  He hated all my family from his having obtained no
+satisfaction from it for his wrath.  We begged the Chancellor Hyde, a
+personage of importance, to be good enough to accept this mission; he saw
+no reason to refuse it, and, after ten or eleven days, he received the
+following reply, with which he was moderately amused:
+
+     CHATEAU SAINT ELIX .  .  .  .  AT THE WORLD'S END.
+
+     I am sensible, my Lord, as I should be, of the honour which you have
+     wished to do me, whilst, notwithstanding, permit me to consider it
+     strange that a man of your importance has cared to meddle in such a
+     negotiation.  His Majesty the King of France did not consult me when
+     he wished to make my wife his mistress; it is somewhat remarkable
+     that so great a prince expects my intervention today to recompense
+     conduct that I have disapproved, that I disapprove, and shall
+     disapprove to my last breath.  His Majesty has got eight or ten
+     children from my wife without saying a word to me about it; this
+     monarch can surely, therefore, make her a present of a duchy without
+     summoning me to his assistance.  According to all laws, human and
+     divine, the King ought to punish Madame de Montespan, and, instead
+     of censuring her, he wishes to make her a duchess! .  .  .  Let him
+     make her a princess, even a highness, if he likes; he has all the
+     power in his hands.  I am only a twig; he is an oak.
+
+     If madame is fostering ambition, mine has been satisfied for forty
+     years; I was born a marquis; a marquis--apart from some unforeseen
+     catastrophe--I will die; and Madame la Marquise, as long as she does
+     not alter her conduct, has no need to alter her degree.
+
+     I will, however, waive my severity, if M. le Duc du Maine will
+     intervene for his mother, and call me his father, however it may be.
+     I am none the less sensible, my lord, of the honour of your
+     acquaintance, and since you form one of the society of Madame la
+     Marquise, endeavour to release yourself from her charms, for she can
+     be an enchantress when she likes....  It is true that, from what
+     they tell me, you were not quite king in your England.
+
+     I am, from out my exile (almost as voluntary as yours), the most
+     obliged and grateful of your servants,
+
+                                        DE GONDRIN MONTESPAN.
+
+
+The Marquise de Thianges felt a certain irritation at the reading of this
+letter; she offered all our excuses for it to the English Chancellor, and
+said to me: "I begin to fear that the King of Versailles is not acting
+with good faith towards you, when he makes your advancement depend on the
+Marquis de Montespan; it is as though he were giving you a duchy in the
+moon."
+
+I sent word to the King that the Marquis refused to assist his generous
+projects; he answered me:
+
+"Very well, we must look somewhere else."
+
+Happily, this domestic humiliation did not transpire at Bourbonne; for M.
+de la Bruyere had arrived there with Monsieur le Prince, and that model
+satirist would unfailingly have made merry over it at my expense.
+
+The best society lavished its attentions on me; Coulanges, whose
+flatteries are so amusing, never left us for a moment.
+
+The Prince, after the States were over, had come to relax himself at
+Bourbonne, which was his property.  After having done all in his power
+formerly to dethrone his master, he is his enthusiastic servitor now that
+he sees him so strong.  He was fascinated with Mademoiselle de Nantes,
+and asked my permission to seek her hand for the Duc de Bourbon, his
+grandson; my reply was, that the alliance was desirable on both sides,
+but that these arrangements were settled only by the King.
+
+In spite of the insolent diatribe of M. de Montespan, the waters proved
+good and favourable; my blood, little by little, grew calm; my pains,
+passing from one knee to the other, insensibly faded away in both; and,
+after having given a brilliant fete to the Prince de Mont-Beliard, the
+English Chancellor, and our most distinguished bathers, I went back to
+Versailles, where the work seemed to me to have singularly advanced.
+
+The King went in advance of us to Corbeil; Madame de Maintenon, her
+pretty nieces, and my children were in the carriage.  The King received
+me with his ordinary kindness, and yet said no word to me of the
+harshness which I had suffered from my husband.  Two or three months
+afterwards he recollected his royal word, and gave me to understand that
+the Prince de Bourbon was shortly going to give up Navarre, in Normandy,
+and that this vast and magnificent estate would be raised to a duchy for
+me.
+
+It has not been yet, at the moment that I write.  Perhaps it is written
+above that I shall never be a duchess.  In such a case, the King would
+not deserve the inward reproaches that my sensibility addresses him,
+since his good-will would be fettered by destiny.
+
+It is my kindness which makes me speak so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The Venetian Drummer.--The Little Olivier.--Adriani's Love.--
+His Ingratitude.--His Punishment.--His Vengeance.--
+Complaint on This Account.
+
+At the great slaughter of Candia, M. de Vivonne had the pleasure of
+saving a young Venetian drummer whom he noticed all covered with blood,
+and senseless, amongst the dead and dying, with whom the field was
+covered far and wide.  He had his wounds dressed and cared for by the
+surgeons of the French navy, with the intention of giving him me, either
+as a valet de chambre or a page, so handsome and agreeable this young
+Italian was.  Adriani was his name.  He presented him to me after the
+return of the expedition to France, and I was sensible of this amiable
+attention of my brother, for truly the peer of this young drummer did not
+exist.
+
+Adrien was admirable to see in my livery, and when my carriage went out,
+he attracted alone all the public attention.  His figure was still not
+all that it might be; it developed suddenly, and then one was not wrong
+in comparing him with a perfect model for the Academy.  He took small
+time in losing the manners which he had brought with him from his
+original calling.  I discovered the best 'ton' in him; he would have been
+far better seated in the interior than outside my equipage.
+Unfortunately, this young impertinent gave himself airs of finding my
+person agreeable, and of cherishing a passion for me; my first valet de
+chambre told me of it at once.  I gave him to the King, who had sometimes
+noticed him in passing.
+
+Adrien was inconsolable at first at this change, for which he was not
+prepared, but his vanity soon came uppermost; he understood that it was
+an advancement, and took himself for a great personage, since he had the
+honour of approaching and serving the King.
+
+The little Olivier--the first assistant in the shop of Madame Camille, my
+dressmaker--saw Adrien, inspired him with love, and herself with much,
+and they had to be married.  I was good-natured enough to be interested
+in this union, and as I had never any fault to find with the intelligent
+services and attentions of the little modiste, I gave her two hundred
+louis, that she might establish herself well and without any waiting.
+
+She had a daughter whom she was anxious to call Athenais.  I thought this
+request excessive; I granted my name of Francoise only.
+
+The young couple would have succeeded amply with their business, since my
+confidence and favour were sufficient to give them vogue; but I was not
+slow in learning that cruel discord had already penetrated to their
+household, and that Adrien, in spite of his adopted country, had remained
+at heart Italian.  Jealous without motive, and almost without love, he
+tormented with his suspicions, his reproaches, and his harshness, an
+attentive and industrious young wife, who loved him with intense love,
+and was unable to succeed in persuading him of it.  From her condition,
+a modiste cannot dispense with being amiable, gracious, engaging.  The
+little Olivier, as pretty as one can be, easily secured the homage of the
+cavaliers.  For all thanks she smiled at the gentlemen, as a well brought
+up woman should do.  Adrien disapproved these manners,--too French, in
+his opinion.  One day he dared to say to his wife, and that before
+witnesses: "Because you have belonged to Madame de Montespan, do you
+think you have the same rights that she has?"  And with that he
+administered a blow to her.
+
+This indecency was reported to me.  I did not take long in discovering
+what it was right to do with Adrien.  I had him sent to Clagny, where I
+happened to be at the time.
+
+"Monsieur the Venetian drummer," I said to him, with the hauteur which it
+was necessary to oppose to his audacity, "Monsieur le Marechal de
+Vivonne, who is always too good, saved your life without knowing you.
+I gave you to the King, imagining that I knew you.  Now I am undeceived,
+and I know, without the least possibility of doubt, that beneath the
+appearance of a good heart you hide the ungrateful and insolent rogue.
+The King needs persons more discreet, less violent, and more polite.
+Madame de Montespan gave you up to the King; Madame de Montespan has
+taken you back this morning to her service.  You depend for the future on
+nobody but Madame de Montespan, and it is her alone that you are bound to
+obey.  Your service in her house has commenced this morning; it will
+finish this evening, and, before midnight, you will leave her for good
+and all.  I have known on all occasions how to pardon slight offences;
+there are some that a person of my rank could not excuse; yours is of
+that number.  Go; make no answer!  Obey, ingrate!  Disappear, I command
+you!"
+
+At these words he tried to throw himself at my feet.  "Go, wretched
+fellow!" I cried to him; and, at my voice, my lackeys ran up and drove
+him from the room and from the chateau.
+
+Almost always these bad-natured folks have cowardly souls.  Adrien, his
+head in a whirl, presented himself to my Suisse at Versailles, who,
+finding his look somewhat sinister, refused to receive him.  He retired
+to my hotel in Paris, where the Suisse, being less of a physiognomist,
+delivered him the key of his old room, and was willing to allow him to
+pass the night there.
+
+Adrien, thinking of naught but how to harm me and give me a memorable
+proof of his vengeance, ran and set fire to my two storehouses, and, to
+put a crown on his rancour, went and hanged himself in an attic.
+
+About two o'clock in the morning, a sick-nurse, having perceived the
+flames, gave loud cries and succeeded in making herself heard.  Public
+help arrived; the fire was mastered.  My Suisse sought everywhere for the
+Italian, whom he thought to be in danger; he stumbled against his corpse.
+What a scene!  What an affliction!  The commissary having had his room
+opened, on a small bureau a letter was found which he had been at the
+pains of writing, and in which he accused me of his despair and death.
+
+The people of Paris have been at all times extravagance and credulity
+itself.  They looked upon this young villain as a martyr, and at once
+dedicated an elegy to him, in which I was compared with Medea, Circe, and
+Fredegonde.
+
+It is precisely on account of this elegy that I have cared to set down
+this cruel anecdote.  My readers, to whom I have just narrated the facts
+with entire frankness, can see well that, instead of having merited
+reproaches, I should only have received praise for my restraint and
+moderation.
+
+It is, assuredly, most painful to have to suffer the abuse of those for
+whom we have never done aught; but the outrages of those whom we have
+succoured, maintained, and favoured are insupportable injuries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The Equipage at Full Speed.--The Poor Vine-grower.--Sensibility of Madame
+de Maintenon.--Her Popularity.--One Has the Right to Crush a Man Who Will
+Not Get Out of the Way.--What One Sees.--What They Tell You.--All Ends at
+the Opera.--One Can Be Moved to Tears and Yet Like Chocolate.
+
+Another event with a tragical issue, and one to which I contributed even
+less, served to feed and foster that hatred, mixed with envy, which the
+rabble populace guards always so persistently towards the favourites of
+kings or fortune.
+
+Naturally quick and impatient, I cannot endure to move with calm and
+state along the roads.  My postilions, my coachmen know it, driving in
+such fashion that no equipage is ever met which cleaves the air like
+mine.
+
+I was descending one day the declivity of the Coeur-Volant, between Saint
+Germain and Marly.  The Marquises de Maintenon and d'Hudicourt were in my
+carriage with M. le Duc du Maine, so far as I can remember.  We were
+going at the pace which I have just told, and my outriders, who rode in
+advance, were clearing the way, as is customary.  A vine-grower, laden
+with sticks, chose this moment to cross the road, thinking himself, no
+doubt, agile enough to escape my six horses.  The cries of my people were
+useless.  The imprudent fellow took his own course, and my postilions, in
+spite of their efforts with the reins, could not prevent themselves from
+passing over his body; the wheels followed the horses; the poor man was
+cut in pieces.
+
+At the lamentations of the country folk and the horrified passers-by, we
+stopped.  Madame de Maintenon wished to alight, and when she perceived
+the unfortunate vine-grower disfigured with his wounds, she clasped her
+hands and fell to weeping.  The Marquise d'Hudicourt, who was always
+simplicity itself, followed her friend's example; there was nothing but
+groans and sorrowful exclamations.  My coachman blamed the postilions,
+the postilions the man's obstinacy.
+
+Madame de Maintenon, speaking as though she were the mistress, bade them
+be silent, and dared to say to them before all the crowd: "If you
+belonged to me, I would soon settle you."  At these words all the
+spectators applauded, and cried: "Vive Madame de Maintenon!"
+
+Irritated at what I had just heard, I put my head out of the door, and,
+turning to these sentimental women, I said to them: "Be good enough to
+get in, mesdames; are you determined to have me stoned?"
+
+They mounted again, after having left my purse with the poor relations
+of the dead man; and as far as Ruel, which was our destination, I was
+compelled to listen to their complaints and litanies.
+
+"Admit, madame," I declared to Madame de Maintenon, "that any person
+except myself could and would detest you for the harm you have done me.
+Your part was to blame the postilions lightly and the rustic very
+positively.  My equipage did not come unexpectedly, and my two outriders
+had signalled from their horses."
+
+"Madame," she replied, "you have not seen, as I did, those eyes of the
+unhappy man forced violently from their sockets, his poor crushed head,
+his palpitating heart, from which the blood soaked the pavement; such a
+sight has moved and broken my own heart.  I was, as I am still, quite
+beside myself, and, in such a situation, it is permissible to forget
+discretion in one's speech and the proprieties.  I had no intention of
+giving you pain; I am distressed at having done so.  But as for your
+coachmen I loathe them, and, since you undertake their defence, I shall
+not for the future show myself in your equipage."
+
+     [In one of her letters, Madame de Maintenon speaks of this accident,
+     but she does not give quite the same account of it.  It is natural
+     that Madame de Montespan seeks to excuse her people and herself if
+     she can.--EDITOR'S NOTE.]
+
+At Ruel, she dared take the same tone before the Duchesse de Richelieu,
+who rebuked her for officiousness, and out of spite, or some other
+reason, Madame de Maintenon refused to dine.  She had two or three
+swooning fits; her tears started afresh four or five times, and the
+Marquise d'Hudicourt, who dined only by snatches, went into a corner to
+sob and weep along with her.
+
+"Admit, madame," I said then to Madame de Maintenon, "your excessive
+grief for an unknown man is singular.  He was, perhaps, actually a
+dishonest fellow.  The accident which you come back to incessantly, and
+which distresses me also, is doubtless deplorable; but, after all, it is
+not a murder, an ambush, a premeditated assassination.  I imagine that if
+such a catastrophe had happened elsewhere, and been reported to us in a
+gazette or a book, you would have read of it with interest and
+commiseration; but we should not have seen you clasp your hands over your
+head, turn red and pale, utter loud cries, shed tears, sob, and scold a
+coachman, postilions, perhaps even me.  The event, would, nevertheless,
+be actually the same.  Admit, then, madame, and you, too, Madame
+d'Hudicourt, that there is an exaggeration in your sorrow, and that you
+would have made, both of you, two excellent comedians."
+
+Madame de Maintenon, piqued at these last words, sought to make us
+understand, and even make us admit, that there is a great difference
+between an event narrated to you by a third party, and an event which one
+has seen.  Madame de Richelieu shut her mouth pleasantly with these
+words: "We know, Madame la Marquise, how much eloquence and wit is yours.
+We approve all your arguments, past and to be.  Let us speak no further
+of an accident which distresses you; and since you require to be
+diverted, let us go to the Opdra, which is only two leagues off."
+
+She consented to accompany us, for fear of proving herself entirely
+ridiculous; but to delay us as much as possible, she required a cup of
+chocolate, her favourite dish, her appetite having returned as soon as
+she had exhausted the possibilities of her grief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Charles II., King of England.--How Interest Can Give Memory.--
+His Grievances against France.--The Two Daughters of the Duke of York.--
+William of Orange Marries One, in Spite of the Opposition of the King.--
+Great Joy of the Allies.--How the King of England Understands Peace.--
+Saying of the King.--Preparations for War.
+
+The King, Charles Stuart, who reigned in England since the death of the
+usurper, Cromwell, was a grandson of Henri IV., just as much as our King.
+Charles II. displayed the pronounced penchant of Henri IV. for the ladies
+and for pleasure; but he had neither his energy, nor his genial temper,
+nor his amiable frankness.  After the death of Henrietta of England, his
+beloved sister, he remained for some time longer our ally, but only to
+take great advantage from our union and alliance.  He had made use of it
+against the Dutch, his naval and commercial rivals, and had compelled
+them, by the aid of the King of France (then his friend), to reimburse
+him a sum of twenty-six millions, and to pay him, further, an annual
+tribute of twelve or fifteen thousand livres for the right of fishing
+round his island domains.
+
+All these things being obtained, be seemed to recollect that Cardinal de
+Richelieu had not protected his father, Stuart; that the Cardinal Mazarin
+had declared for Cromwell in his triumph; that the Court of France had
+indecently gone into mourning for that robber; that there had been
+granted neither guards, nor palace, nor homages of state to the Queen,
+his mother, although daughter and sister of two French kings; that this
+Queen, in a modest retirement--sometimes in a cell in the convent of
+Chaillot, sometimes in her little pavilion at Colombesl--had died,
+poisoned by her physician, without the orator, Bossuet, having even
+frowned at it in the funeral oration;
+
+     [Mademoiselle de Montpensier, in her Memoirs, says that this Queen,
+     already languishing, had lost her sleep, and was given soporific
+     pills, on account of which Henrietta of France awoke no more; but it
+     is probable that the servants, and not the doctors, committed this
+     blunder.]
+
+that the unfortunate Henrietta daughter of this Queen and first wife of
+Monsieur had succumbed to the horrible tortures of a poisoning even more
+visible and manifest; whilst her poisoners, who were well known, had
+never been in the least blamed or disgraced.
+
+On all these arguments, with more or less foundation, Charles II.
+managed to conclude that he ought to detach himself from France, who was
+not helpful enough; and, by deserting us, he excited universal joy
+amongst his subjects, who were constantly jealous of us.
+
+Charles Stuart had had children by his mistresses; he had had none by the
+Queen, his wife.  The presumptive heir to the Crown was the Duke of York,
+his Majesty's only brother.
+
+The Duke of York, son-in-law--as I have noticed already--of our good
+Chancellor, Lord Hyde, had himself only two daughters, equally beautiful,
+who, according to the laws of those islanders, would bear the sceptre in
+turn.
+
+Our King, who read in the future, was thinking of marrying these two
+princesses conformably with our interests, when the Prince of Orange
+crossed the sea, and went formally to ask the hand of the elder of his
+uncle.
+
+Informed of this proceeding, the King at once sent M. de Croissy-Colbert
+to the Duke of York, to induce him to interfere and refuse his daughter;
+but, in royal families, it is always the head who makes and decides
+marriages.  William of Orange obtained his charming cousin Mary, and
+acquired that day the expectation of the Protestant throne, which was his
+ambition.
+
+At the news of this marriage, the allies, that is to say, all the King's
+enemies, had an outburst of satisfaction, and gave themselves up to
+puerile jubilations.  The King of Great Britain stood definitely on their
+side; he made common cause with them, and soon there appeared in the
+political world an audacious document signed by this prince, in which,
+from the retreat of his island, the empire of fogs, he dared to demand
+peace from Louis of Bourbon, his ancient ally and his cousin german,
+imposing on him the most revolting conditions.
+
+According to the English monarch, France ought to restore to the
+Spaniards, first Sicily, and, further, the towns of Charleroi, Ath,
+Courtrai, Condo, Saint Guilain, Tournai, and Valenciennes, as a condition
+of retaining Franche-Comte; moreover, France was compelled to give up
+Lorraine to the Duke Charles, and places in German Alsace to the Emperor.
+
+The King replied that "too much was too much."  He referred the decision
+of his difficulties to the fortune of war, and collected fresh soldiers.
+
+Then, without further delay, England and the States General signed a
+particular treaty at La Hague, to constrain France (or, rather, her
+ruler) to accept the propositions that his pride refused to hear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The Great Mademoiselle Buys Choisy.--The President Gonthier.--The
+Indemnity.--The Salmon.--The Harangue as It Is Not Done in the Academy.
+
+The King had only caused against his own desire the extreme grief which
+Mademoiselle felt at the imprisonment of Lauzun.  His Majesty was
+sensible of the wisdom of the resolution which she had made not to break
+with the Court, and to show herself at Saint Germain, or at Versailles,
+from time to time, as her rank, her near kinship, her birth demanded.
+He said to me one day: "My cousin is beginning to look up.  I see with
+pleasure that her complexion is clearing, that she laughs willingly at
+this and that, and that her good-will for me is restored.  I am told that
+she is occupied in building a country-house above Vitry.  Let us go to-
+day and surprise her, and see what this house of Choisy is like."
+
+We arrived at a sufficiently early hour, and had time to see everything.
+The King found the situation most agreeable; those lovely gardens united
+high up above the Seine, those woods full of broad walks, of light and
+air, those points of view happily chosen and arranged, gave a charming
+effect; the house of one story, raised on steps of sixteen stairs,
+appeared to us elegant from its novelty; but the King blamed his cousin
+for not having put a little architecture and ornament on the facade.
+
+"Princes," said he, "have no right to be careless; since universal
+agreement has made us Highnesses, we must know how to carry our burden,
+and to lay it down at no time, and in no place."
+
+Mademoiselle excused herself on the ground of her remoteness from the
+world, and on the expense, which she wished to keep down.
+
+"From the sight of the country," said the King, "you must have a hundred
+to a hundred and twelve, acres here."
+
+"A hundred and nine," she answered.
+
+"Have you paid dear for this property?" went on the King.  "It is the
+President Gonthier who has sold it?"
+
+"I paid for this site, and the old house which no longer exists, forty
+thousand livres," she said.
+
+"Forty thousand livres!" cried the King.  "Oh, my cousin, there is no
+such thing as conscience!  You have not paid for the ground.  I was
+assured that poor President Gonthier had only got rid of his house at
+Choisy because his affairs were embarrassed; you must indemnify him, or
+rather I will indemnify him myself, by giving him a pension."
+
+Mademoiselle bit her lip and added:
+
+"The President asked sixty thousand first; my men of business offered him
+forty, and he accepted it."
+
+Mademoiselle has no generosity, although she is immensely rich; she
+pretended not to hear, and it was M. Colbert who sent by order the twenty
+thousand livres to the President.
+
+Mademoiselle, vain and petty, as though she were a bourgeoise of
+yesterday, showed us her gallery, where she had already collected the
+selected portraits of all her ancestors, relations, and kindred; she
+pointed out to us in her winter salon the portrait of the little Comte de
+Toulouse, painted, not as an admiral, but as God of the Sea, floating on
+a pearl shell; and his brother, the Duc du Maine, as Colonel-General of
+the Swiss and Grisons.  The full-length portrait of the King was visible
+on three chimneypieces; she was at great pains to make a merit of it, and
+call for thanks.
+
+Having followed her into her state chamber, where she had stolen in
+privately, I saw that she was taking away the portrait of Lauzun.  I went
+and told it to the King, who shrugged his shoulders and fell to laughing.
+
+"She is fifty-two years old," he said to me.
+
+A very pretty collation of confitures and fruits was served us, to which
+the King prayed her to add a ragout of peas and a roasted fowl.
+
+During the repast, he said to her: "For the rest, I have not noticed the
+portrait of Gaston, your father; is it a distraction on my part, or an
+omission on yours?"
+
+"It will be put there later," she answered.  "It is not time."
+
+"What! your father!"  added the King.  "You do not think that, cousin!"
+
+"All my actions," added the Princess, "are weighed in the balance
+beforehand; if I were to exhibit the portrait of my father at the head of
+these various pictures, I should have to put my stepmother, his wife,
+there too, as a necessary pendant.  The harm which she has done me does
+not permit of that complacence.  One opens one's house only to one's
+friends."
+
+"Your stepmother has never done you any other harm," replied the King,
+"than to reclaim for her children the funds or the furniture left by your
+father.  The character of Margaret of Lorraine has always been sweetness
+itself; seeing your irritation, she begged me to arbitrate myself; and
+you know all that M. Colbert and the Chancellor did to satisfy you under
+the circumstances.  But let us speak of something else, and cease these
+discussions.  I have a service to ask of you: here is M. le Duc du Maine
+already big; everybody knows of your affection for him, and I have seen
+his portrait with pleasure, in one of your salons.  I am going to
+establish him; would it be agreeable to you if I give him your livery?"
+
+"M. le Duc du Maine," said the Princess, "is the type of what is
+gracious, and noble, and beautiful; he can only do honour to my livery;
+I grant it him with all my heart, since you do me the favour of desiring
+it.  Would I were in a position to do more for him!"
+
+The King perfectly understood these last words; he made no reply to them,
+but he understood all that he was meant to understand.  We went down
+again into the gardens.
+
+The fishermen of Choisy had just caught a salmon of enormous size, which
+they had been pursuing for four or five days; they had intended to offer
+it to Mademoiselle; the presence of the King inspired them with another
+design.  They wove with great diligence a large and pretty basket of
+reeds, garnished it with foliage, young grass, and flowers, and came and
+presented to the King their salmon, all leaping in the basket.
+
+The fisherman charged with the address only uttered a few words; they
+were quite evidently improvised, so that they gave more pleasure and
+effect than those of academicians, or persons of importance.  The
+fisherman expressed himself thus:
+
+"You have brought us good fortune, Sire, by your presence, as you bring
+fortune to your generals.  You arrive on the Monday; on the Tuesday the
+town is taken.  We come to offer to the greatest of kings the greatest
+salmon that can be caught."
+
+The King desired this speech to be instantly transcribed; and, after
+having bountifully rewarded the sailors, his Majesty said to
+Mademoiselle:
+
+"This man was born to be a wit; if he were younger, I would place him in
+a college.  There is wit at Choisy in every rank of life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Departure of the King.--Ghent Reduced in Five Days.--Taking of Ypres.--
+Peace Signed.--The Prince of Orange Is at Pains Not to Know of It.--
+Horrible Cruelties.
+
+I have related in what manner Charles II., suddenly pronouncing in favour
+of his nephew, the Prince of Orange, had signed a league with his old
+enemies, the Dutch, in order to counteract the success of the King of
+France and compel him to sign a humiliating and entirely inadmissible
+peace.
+
+The King left Versailles suddenly on the 4th of February, 1678, taking,
+with his whole Court, the road to Lorraine, while waiting for the troops
+which had wintered on the frontiers, and were investing at once
+Luxembourg, Charlemont, Namur, Mons, and Ypres, five of the strongest and
+best provisioned places in the Low Countries.  By this march and
+manoeuvre, he wished to hoodwink the allied generals, who were very far
+from imagining that Ghent was the point towards which the Conqueror's
+intentions were directed.
+
+In effect, hardly had the King seen them occupied in preparing the
+defence of the above named places, when, leaving the Queen and the ladies
+in the agreeable town of Metz, he rapidly traversed sixty leagues of
+country, and laid siege to the town of Ghent, which was scarcely
+expecting him.
+
+The Spanish governor, Don Francisco de Pardo, having but a weak garrison
+and little artillery, decided upon releasing the waters and inundating
+the country; but certain heights remained which could not be covered, and
+from here the French artillery started to storm the ramparts and the
+fort.
+
+The siege was commenced on the 4th of March; upon the 9th the town opened
+its gates, and two days later the citadel.  Ypres was carried at the end
+of a week, in spite of the most obstinate resistance.  Our grenadiers
+performed prodigies, and lost all their officers, without exception.
+I lost there one of my nephews, the one hope of his family; my
+compliments to the King, therefore, were soon made.
+
+He went to Versailles to take back the Queen, and returned to Ghent with
+the speed and promptitude of lightning.  The same evening he sent an
+order to a detachment of the garrison of Maestricht to hasten and seize
+the town and citadel of Leuwe, in Brabant, which was executed on the
+instant.  It was then that the Dutch sent their deputation, charged to
+plead for a suspension of hostilities for six weeks.  The King granted
+it, although these blunderers hardly merited it.  They undertook that
+Spain should join them in the peace, and finally, after some
+difficulties, settled more or less rightly, the treaty was signed on the
+10th of August, just as the six weeks were about to expire.
+
+The Prince of Orange, naturally bellicose, and, above all things,
+passionately hostile to France, pretended to ignore the existence of this
+peace, which he disapproved.  The Marechal de Luxembourg, informed of the
+treaty, gave himself up to the security of the moment; he was actually at
+table with his numerous officers when he was warned that the Prince of
+Orange was advancing against him.  The alarm was quickly sounded; such
+troops and cavalry as could be were assembled, and a terrible action
+ensued.
+
+At first we were repulsed, but soon the Marshal rallied his men;
+he excited their indignation by exposing to them the atrocity of M.
+d'Orange, and after a terrible massacre, in which two thousand English
+bit the dust, the Marechal de Luxembourg remained master of the field.
+
+He was victorious, but in this unfortunate action we lost, ourselves, the
+entire regiment of guards, that of Feuquieres, and several others
+besides, with an incredible quantity of officers, killed or wounded.
+
+The name of the Prince of Orange, since that day, was held in horror in
+both armies, and he would have fallen into disgrace with the States
+General themselves had it not been for the protection of the King of
+England, to whom the Dutch were greatly bound.
+
+On the following day, this monster sent a parliamentary officer to the
+French generals to inform them that during the night official news of the
+peace had reached him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Mission of Madame de Maintenon to Choisy.--Mademoiselle Gives the
+Principalities of Eu and Dombes in Exchange for M. de Lauzun.--
+He Is Set at Liberty.
+
+The four or five words which had escaped Mademoiselle de Montpensier had
+remained in the King's recollection.  He said to me: "If you had more
+patience, and a sweeter and more pliant temper, I would employ you to go
+and have a little talk with Mademoiselle, in order to induce her to
+explain what intentions she may have relative to my son."
+
+"I admit, Sire," I answered him, "that I am not the person required for
+affairs of that sort.  Your cousin is proud and cutting; I would not
+endure what she has made others endure.  I cannot accept such a
+commission.  But Madame de Maintenon, who is gentleness itself, is
+suitable--no one more so for this mission; she is at once insinuating and
+respectful; she is attached to the Duc du Maine.  The interests of my son
+could not be in better hands."
+
+The King agreed with me, and both he and I begged the Marquise to conduct
+M. du Maine to Choisy.
+
+Mademoiselle de Montpensier received him with rapture.  He thanked her
+for what she had done for him, in granting him her colours, and upon that
+Mademoiselle asked his permission to embrace him, and to tell him how
+amiable and worthy of belonging to the King she found him.  She led him
+to the hall, in which he was to be seen represented as a colonel-general
+of Swiss.
+
+"I have always loved the Swiss," she said, "because of their great
+bravery, their fidelity, and their excellent discipline.  The Marechal de
+Bassompierre made his corps the perfection which it is; it is for you, my
+cousin, to maintain it."
+
+She passed into another apartment, where she was to be seen represented
+as Bellona.  Two Loves were presenting her, one with his helm adorned
+with martial plumes, the other with his buckler of gold, with the
+Orleans-Montpensier arms.  The laurel crown, with which Triumphs were
+ornamenting her head, and the scaled cuirass of Pallas completed her
+decoration.  M. le Duc du Maine praised, without affectation, the
+intelligence of the artist; and as for the figure and the likeness, he
+said to the Princess: "You are good, but you are better."  The calm and
+the naivety of this compliment made Mademoiselle shed tears.  Her emotion
+was visible; she embraced my son anew.
+
+"You have brought him up perfectly," she said to Madame de Maintenon.
+"His urbanity is of good origin; that is how a king's son ought to act
+and speak:
+
+"His Majesty," said Madame de Maintenon, "has been enchanted with your
+country-house; he spoke of it all the evening.  He even added that you
+had ordered it all yourself, without an architect, and that M. le Notre
+would not have done better."
+
+"M. le Notre," replied the Princess, "came here for a little; he wanted
+to cut and destroy, and upset and disarrange, as with the King at
+Versailles.  But I am of a different mould to my cousin; I am not to be
+surprised with big words.  I saw that Le Notre thought only of
+expenditure and tyranny; I thanked him for his good intentions, and
+prayed him not to put himself out for me.  I found there thickets already
+made, of an indescribable charm; he wanted, on the instant, to clear them
+away, so that one could testify that all this new park was his.  If you
+please, madame, tell his Majesty that M. le Notre is the sworn enemy of
+Nature; that he sees only the pleasures of proprietorship in the future,
+and promises us cover and shade just at that epoch of our life when we
+shall only ask for sunshine in which to warm ourselves."
+
+She next led her guests towards the large apartments.  When she had come
+to her bedroom, she showed the Marquise the mysterious portrait, and
+asked if she recognised it.
+
+"Ah, my God! 'tis himself!"  said Madame de Maintenon at once.  "He sees,
+he breathes, he regards us; one might believe one heard him speak.  Why
+do you give yourself this torture?" continued the ambassadress.  "The
+continual presence of an unhappy and beloved being feeds your grief, and
+this grief insensibly undermines you.  In your place, Princess, I should
+put him elsewhere until a happier and more favourable hour."
+
+"That hour will never come," cried Mademoiselle.
+
+"Pardon me," resumed Madame de Maintenon; "the King is never inhuman and
+inexorable; you should know that better than any one.  He punishes only
+against the protests of his heart, and, as soon as he can relent without
+impropriety or danger, he pardons.  M. de Lauzun, by refusing haughtily
+the marshal's baton, which was offered him in despite of his youth,
+deeply offended the King, and the disturbance he allowed himself to make
+at Madame de Montespan's depicted him as a dangerous and wrong-headed
+man.  Those are his sins.  Rest assured, Princess, that I am well
+informed.  But as I know, at the same time, that the King was much
+attached to him,--and is still so, to some extent, and that a captivity
+of ten years is a rough school, I have the assurance that your Highness
+will not be thought importunate if you make today some slight attempt
+towards a clemency."
+
+"I will do everything they like," Mademoiselle de Montpensier said then;
+"but shall I have any one near his Majesty to assist and support my
+undertaking?  I have no more trust in Madame de Montespan; she has
+betrayed us, she will betray us again; the offence of M. de Lauzun is
+always present in her memory, and she is a lady who does not easily
+forgive.  As for you, madame, I know that the King considers you for the
+invaluable services of the education given to his children.  Deign to
+speak and act in favour of my unhappy husband, and I will make you a
+present of one of my fine titled territories."
+
+Madame de Maintenon was too acute to accept anything in such a case;
+she answered the Princess that her generosities, to please the King,
+should be offered to M. le Duc du Maine, and that, by assuring a part of
+her succession to that young prince, she had a sure method of moving the
+monarch, and of turning his paternal gratitude to the most favourable
+concessions.  The Princess, enchanted, then said to the negotiatrix:
+
+"Be good enough to inform his Majesty, this evening, that I offer to
+give, at once, to his dear and amiable child the County of Eu and my
+Sovereignty of Dombes, adding the revenues to them if it is necessary."
+
+Madame de Maintenon, who worships her pupil, kissed the hand of
+Mademoiselle, and promised to return and see her immediately.
+
+That very evening she gave an account to the King of her embassy; she
+solicited the liberty of the Marquis de Lauzun, and the King commenced by
+granting "the authorisation of mineral waters."
+
+Meanwhile, Mademoiselle, presented by Madame de Maintenon, went to take
+counsel with the King.  She made a formal donation of the two
+principalities which I have named.  His Majesty, out of courtesy, left
+her the revenues, and, in fine, she was permitted to marry her M. de
+Lauzun, and to assure him, by contract, fifty thousand livres of income.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+M. de Brisacier and King Casimir.--One Is Never so Well Praised as by
+Oneself.--He Is Sent to Get Himself Made a Duke Elsewhere.
+
+The Abbe de Brisacier, the famous director of consciences, possessed
+enough friends and credit to advance young Brisacier, his nephew, to the
+Queen's household, to whom he had been made private secretary.
+Slanderers or impostors had persuaded this young coxcomb that Casimir,
+the King of Poland, whilst dwelling in Paris in the quality of a simple
+gentleman, had shown himself most assiduous to Madame Brisacier, and that
+he, Brisacier of France, was born of these assiduities of the Polish
+prince.
+
+When he saw the Comte Casimir raised to the elective throne of Poland,
+he considered himself as the issue of royal blood, and it seemed to him
+that his position with the Queen, Maria Theresa, was a great injustice of
+fortune; he thought, nevertheless, that he ought to remain some time
+longer in this post of inferiority, in order to use it as a ladder of
+ascent.
+
+The Queen wrote quantities of letters to different countries, and
+especially to Spain, but never, or hardly ever, in her own hand.  One
+day, whilst handling all this correspondence for the princess's
+signature, the private secretary slipped one in, addressed to Casimir,
+the Polish King.
+
+In this letter, which from one end to the other sang the praises of the
+Seigneur Brisacier, the Queen had the extreme kindness to remind the
+Northern monarch of his old liaison with the respectable mother of the
+young man, and her Majesty begged the prince to solicit from the King of
+France the title and rank of duke for so excellent a subject.
+
+King Casimir was not, as one knows, distrust and prudence personified; he
+walked blindfold into the trap; he wrote with his royal hand to his
+brother, the King of France, and asked him a brevet as duke for young
+Brisacier.  Our King, who did not throw duchies at people's heads, read
+and re-read the strange missive with astonishment and suspicion.  He
+wrote in his turn to the suppliant King, and begged him to send him the
+why and the wherefore of this hieroglyphic adventure.  The good prince,
+ignorant of ruses, sent the letter of the Queen herself.
+
+Had this princess ever given any reason to be talked about, there is no
+doubt that she would have been lost on this occasion; but there was
+nothing to excite suspicion.  The King, no less, approached her with
+precaution, in order to observe the first results of her answers.
+
+"Madame," he said, "are you still quite satisfied with young Brisacier,
+your private secretary?"
+
+"More or less," replied the Infanta; "a little light, a little absent;
+but, on the whole, a good enough young man."
+
+"Why have you recommended him to the King of Poland, instead of
+recommending him to me directly?"
+
+"To the King of Poland!--I?  I have not written to him since I
+congratulated him on his succession."
+
+"Then, madame, you have been deceived in this matter, since I have your
+last letter in my hands.  Here it is; I return it to you."
+
+The princess read the letter with attention; her astonishment was
+immense.
+
+"My signature has been used without authority," she said.  "Brisacier
+alone can be guilty, being the only one interested."
+
+This new kind of ambitious man was summoned; he was easily confounded.
+The King ordered him to prison, wishing to frighten him for a punishment,
+and at the end of some days he was commanded to quit France and go and be
+made duke somewhere else.
+
+This event threw such ridicule upon pretenders to the ducal state, that I
+no longer dared speak further to the King of the hopes which he had held
+out to me; moreover, the things which supervened left me quite convinced
+of the small success which would attend my efforts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Compliment from Monsieur to the New Prince de Dombes.--Roman History.--
+The Emperors Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, and Verus.--The Danger of Erudition.
+
+Monsieur, having learnt what his cousin of Montpensier had just done for
+my Duc du Maine, felt all possible grief and envy at it.  He had always
+looked to inherit from her, and the harshest enemy whom M. de Lauzun met
+with at his wedding was, undoubtedly, Monsieur.  When M. le Duc du Maine
+received the congratulations of all the Court on the ground of his new
+dignity of Prince de Dombes, his uncle was the last to appear; even so he
+could not refrain from making him hear these disobliging words,--who
+would believe it?--"If I, too, were to give you my congratulation, it
+would be scarcely sincere; what will be left for my children?"
+
+Madame de Maintenon, who is never at a loss, replied: "There will be left
+always, Monseigneur, the remembrance of your virtues; that is a fair
+enough inheritance."
+
+We complained of it to the King; he reprimanded him in a fine fashion.
+"I gave you a condition so considerable," said he, "that the Queen, our
+mother, herself thought it exaggerated and dangerous in your hands.  You
+have no liking for my children, although you feign a passionate affection
+for their father; the result of your misbehaviour will be that I shall
+grow cool to your line, and that your daughter, however beautiful and
+amiable she may be, will not marry my Dauphin."
+
+At this threat Monsieur was quite overcome, and anxious to make his
+apologies to the King; he assured him of his tender affection for M. le
+Duc du Maine, and would give him to understand that Madame de Maintenon
+had misunderstood him.
+
+"It is not from her that your compliment came to us; it is from M. le Duc
+du Maine, who is uprightness itself, and whose mouth has never lied."
+
+Monsieur then started playing at distraction and puerility; the medal-
+case was standing opened, his gaze was turned to it.  Then he came to me
+and said in a whisper: "I pray you, come and look at the coin of Marcus
+Aurelius; do you not find that the King resembles that emperor in every
+feature?"
+
+"You are joking," I answered him.  "His Majesty is as much like him as
+you are like me."
+
+He insisted, and his brother, who witnessed our argument, wished to know
+the reason.  When he understood, he said to Monsieur: "Madame de
+Montespan is right; I am not in the least like that Roman prince in face.
+The one to whom I should wish to be like in merit is Trajan."
+
+"Trajan had fine qualities," replied Monsieur; "that does not prevent me
+from preferring Marcus Aurelius."
+
+"On what grounds?"  asked his Majesty.
+
+"On the grounds that he shared his throne with Verus," replied Monsieur,
+unhesitatingly.
+
+The King flushed at this reply, and answered in few words: "Marcus
+Aurelius's action to his brother may, be called generous; it was none
+the less inconsiderate.  By his own confession, the Emperor Verus proved,
+by his debauchery and his vices, unworthy, of the honour which had been
+done him.  Happily, he died from his excesses during the Pannonian War,
+and Marcus Aurelius could only do well from that day on."
+
+Monsieur, annoyed with his erudition and confused at his escapade, sought
+to change the conversation.  The King, passing into his cabinet, left him
+entirely, in my charge.  I scolded him for his inconsequences, and he
+dared to implore me to put his daughter "in the right way," to become one
+day Queen of France by marrying Monsieur le Dauphin, whom she loved
+already with her whole heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The Benedictines of Fontevrault.--The Head in the Basin.--The Unfortunate
+Delivery.--The Baptism of the Monster.--The Courageous Marriage.--
+Foundation of the Royal Abbey of Fontevrault.
+
+Two or three days after our arrival at Fontevrault, the King, who loves
+to know all the geographical details of important places, asked me of the
+form and particulars of the celebrated abbey.  I gave him a natural
+description of it.
+
+"They are two vast communities," I told him, "which the founder, for some
+inexplicable whim, united in one domain, of an extent which astonishes
+the imagination."
+
+The Community of Benedictine Nuns is regarded as the first, because of
+the abbotorial dignity it possesses.  The Community of Benedictine Monks
+is only second,--a fact which surprises greatly strangers and visitors.
+Both in the monastery and the convent the buildings are huge and
+magnificent, the courts spacious, the woods and streams well distributed
+and well kept.
+
+"Every morning you may see a hundred and fifty to two hundred ploughs
+issue from both establishments; these spread over the plain and till an
+immense expanse of land.  Carts drawn by bullocks, big mules, or superb
+horses are ceaselessly exporting the products of the fields, the meadows,
+or the orchards.  Innumerable cows cover the pastures, and legions of
+women and herds are employed to look after these estates.
+
+"The aspect of Fontevrault gives an exact idea of the ancient homes of
+the Patriarchs, in their remote periods of early civilisation, which saw
+the great proprietors delighting in their natal hearth, and finding their
+glory, as well as their happiness, in fertilising or assisting nature.
+
+"The abbess rules like a sovereign over her companion nuns, and over the
+monks, her neighbours.  She appoints their officers and their temporal
+prince.  It is she who admits postulants, who fixes the dates of
+ordinations, pronounces interdictions, graces, and penances.  They render
+her an account of their administration and the employment of their
+revenues, from which she subtracts carefully her third share, as the
+essential right of her crosier of authority."
+
+"Have you invited the Benedictine Fathers to your fete in the wood?"  the
+King asked me, smiling.
+
+"We had no power, Sire," I answered.  "There are many young ladies being
+educated with the nuns of Fontevrault.  The parents of these young ladies
+respectful as they are to these monks, would have looked askance at the
+innovation.  The Fathers never go in there.  They are to be seen at the
+abbey church, where they sing and say their offices.  Only the three
+secular chaplains of the abbess penetrate into the house of the nuns; the
+youngest of the three cannot be less than fifty.
+
+"The night of the feast the monks draw near our cloister by means of a
+wooden theatre, which forms a terrace, and from this elevation they
+participate by the eye and ear in our amusements; that is enough."
+
+"Has Madame de Mortemart ever related to you the origin of her abbey?"
+resumed the King.  "Perhaps she is ignorant of it.  I am going to tell
+you of it, for it is extremely curious; it is not as it is related in the
+books, and I take the facts from good authority.  You must hear of it,
+and you will see.
+
+"There was once a Comtesse de Poitiers, named Honorinde, to whom fate had
+given for a husband the greatest hunter in the world.  This man would
+have willingly passed his life in the woods, where he hunted, night and
+day, what we call, in hunter's parlance, 'big game.'  Having won the
+victory over a monstrous boar, he cut off the head himself, and this
+quivering and bleeding mask he went to offer to his lady in a basin.  The
+young woman was in the first month of her pregnancy.  She was filled with
+repugnance and fright at the sight of this still-threatening head; it
+troubled her to the prejudice of her fruit.
+
+"Eight, or seven and a half, months afterwards, she brought into the
+world a girl who was human in her whole body, but above had the horrible
+head of a wild boar!  Imagine what cries, what grief, what despair!  The
+cure of the place refused baptism, and the Count, broken down and
+desolate, ordered the child to be drowned.
+
+"Instead of throwing it into the water, his servant scrupulously went
+straight to the monastery where your sister rules.  He laid down his
+closed packet in the church of the monks, and then returned to his lord,
+who never had any other child.
+
+"The religious Benedictines, not knowing whence this monster came,
+believed there was some prodigy in it.  They baptised in this little
+person all that was not boar, and left the surplus to Providence.  They
+brought up the singular creature in the greatest secrecy; it drank and
+lapped after the manner of its kind.  As it grew up it walked on its
+feet, and that without the least imperfection; it could sit down, go on
+its knees, and even make a courtesy.  But it never articulated any
+distinct words, and it had always a harsh and rough voice which howled
+and grunted.  Its intelligence never reached the knowledge of reading or
+writing; but it understood easily all that could be said to it, and the
+proof was that it replied by its actions.
+
+"The Comte de Poitiers having died whilst hunting, Honorinde learnt of
+her old serving-man in what refuge, in what asylum, he had long ago
+deposited the little one.  This good mother proceeded there, and the
+monks, after some hesitation, confessed what had become of it.  She
+wished to see it; they showed it her.  At its aspect she felt the same
+inward commotion which had, years before, perverted nature.  She groaned,
+fainted, burst into tears, and never had the courage and firmness to
+embrace what she had seen.
+
+"Her gratitude was not less lively and sincere; she handed a considerable
+sum to the Benedictines of Fontevrault, charging them to continue their
+good work and charity.
+
+"The reverend Prior, reflecting that his hideous inmate came of a great
+family, and of a family of great property, resolved to procure it as a
+wife for his nephew.  He sounded the young man, who looked fixedly at his
+future bride, and avowed that he was satisfied.
+
+"She is a good Christian," he replied to his uncle, since you have
+baptised her here.  She is of a good family, since Honorinde has
+recognised her.  There are many as ugly as she is to be seen who still
+find husbands.  I will put a pretty mask on her, and the mask will give
+me sufficient illusion.  Benedicte, so far as she goes, is well-made; I
+hope to have fine children who will talk.
+
+"The Prior commenced by marrying them; he then confided in Honorinde,
+who, not daring to noise abroad this existence, was compelled to submit
+to what had been done.
+
+"The marriage of the young she-monster was not happy.  She bit her
+husband from morning to night.  She did not know how to sit at table,
+and would only eat out of a trough.  She needed neither an armchair,
+a sofa, nor a couch; she stretched herself out on the sand or on the
+pavement.
+
+"Her husband, in despair, demanded the nullification of his marriage;
+and as the courts did not proceed fast enough for his impatience,
+he killed his companion, Benedicte, with a pistol-shot, at the moment
+when she was biting and tearing him before witnesses.
+
+"Honorinde had her buried at Fontevrault, and over her tomb, at the end
+of the year, she built a convent, to which her immense property was
+given, where she retired herself as a simple nun, and of which she was
+appointed first abbess by the Pope who reigned at the time.
+
+"There, madame," added the King, "is the somewhat singular origin of the
+illustrious abbey which your sister rules with such eclat.  You must have
+remarked the boar's head, perfectly imitated in sculpture, in the dome;
+that mask is the speaking history of the noble community of Fontevrault,
+where more than a hundred Benedictine monks obey an abbess."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Fine Couples Make Fine Children.--The Dauphine of Bavaria.--She
+Displeases Madame de Montespan.--First Debut Relating to Madame de
+Maintenon, Appointed Lady-in-waiting.--Conversation between the Two
+Marquises.
+
+The King, in his moments of effusion and abandonment (then so full of
+pleasantness), had said more than once: "If I have any physical beauty,
+I owe it to the Queen, my mother; if my daughters have any beauty, they
+owe it to me: it is only fine couples who get fine children."
+
+When I saw him decided upon marrying Monseigneur le Dauphin, I reminded
+him of his maxim.  He fell to smiling, and answered me: "Chance, too,
+sometimes works its miracles.  My choice for my son is a decided thing;
+my politics come before my taste, and I have asked for the daughter of
+the Elector of Bavaria, whose portrait I will show you.  She is not
+beautiful, like you; she is prettier than Benedicte, and I hope that she
+will not bite Monseigneur le Dauphin in her capricious transports."
+
+The portrait that the King showed me was a flattering one, as are, in
+general, all these preliminary samples.  For all that, the Princess
+seemed to me hideous, and even disagreeable, especially about her eyes,
+that portion of the face which confirms the physiognomy and decides
+everything.
+
+"Monseigneur will never love that woman," I said to the King.  "That
+constrained look in the pupil, those drooping eyes,--they make my heart
+ache."
+
+"My son, happily," his Majesty answered, "is not so difficult as you and
+I.  He has already seen this likeness, and at the second look he was
+taken; and as we have assured him that the young person is well made, he
+cries quits with her face, and proposes to love her as soon as he gets
+her."
+
+"God grant it!" I added; and the King told me, more or less in detail,
+of what important personages he was going to compose his household.  The
+eternal Abbe Bossuet was to become first chaplain, as being the tutor-in-
+chief to the Dauphin; the Duchesse de Richelieu, for her great name, was
+going to be lady of honour; and the two posts of ladies in waiting were
+destined for the Marquise de Rochefort, wife of the Marshal, and for
+Madame de Maintenon, ex-governess of the Duc du Maine.  The gesture of
+disapproval which escaped me gave his Majesty pain.
+
+"Why this air of contempt or aversion?"  he said, changing colour.
+"Is it to the Marechale de Rochefort or the Marquise de Maintenon that
+you object? I esteem both the one and the other, and I am sorry for you
+if you do not esteem them too."
+
+"The Marechale de Rochefort," I replied, without taking any fright, "is
+aged, and almost always sick; a lady of honour having her appearance will
+make a contrast with her office.  As to the other, she still has beauty
+and elegance; but do you imagine, Sire, that the Court of Bavaria and the
+Court of France have forgotten, in so short a time, the pleasant and
+burlesque name of the poet Scarron?"
+
+"Every one ought to forget what I have forgotten," replied the King,
+"and what my gratitude will not, and cannot forget, I am surprised that
+you, madame, should take pleasure in forgetting."
+
+"She has taken care of my children since the cradle, I admit it with
+pleasure," said I to his Majesty, without changing my tone; "you have
+given her a marquisate for recompense, and a superb hotel completely
+furnished at Versailles.  I do not see that she has any cause for
+complaint, nor that after such bounty there is more to add."
+
+"Of eight children that you have brought into the world, madame, she has
+reared and attended perfectly to six," replied the King.  "The estate of
+Maintenon has, at the most, recompensed the education of the Comtes de
+Vegin, whose childhood was so onerous.  And for the remainder of my
+little family, what have I yet done that deserves mention?"
+
+"Give her a second estate and money," I cried, quite out of patience,
+"since it is money which pays all services of that nature; but what need
+have you to raise her to great office, and keep her at Court?  She dotes,
+she says, on her old chateau of Maintenon; do not deprive her of this
+delight.  By making her lady in waiting, you would be disobliging her."
+
+"She will accept out of courtesy," he said to me, putting on an air of
+mockery.  And as the time for the Council was noted by him on my clock,
+he went away without adding more.
+
+Since M. le Duc du Maine had grown up, and Mademoiselle de Nantes had
+been confided to the Marquise de Montchevreuil, Madame de Maintenon
+continued to occupy her handsome apartment on the Princes' Court.  There
+she received innumerable visits, she paid assiduous court to the Queen,
+who had suddenly formed a taste for her, and took her on her walks and
+her visits to the communities; but this new Marquise saw me rarely.
+Since the affair of the vine-grower, killed on the road, she declared
+that I had insulted her before everybody, and that I had ordered her
+imperiously to return to my carriage, as though she had been a waiting-
+maid, or some other menial.  Her excessive sensibility readily afforded
+her this pretext, so that she neglected and visibly overlooked me.
+
+As she did not come to me, I betook myself to her at a tolerably early
+hour, before the flood of visitors, and started her on the history of the
+lady in waiting.
+
+"His Majesty has spoken of it to me," she said, "as of a thing possible;
+but I do not think there is anything settled yet in the matter."
+
+"Will you accept," I asked her, "supposing the King to insist?"
+
+"I should like a hundred times better," she replied, "to go and live in
+independence in my little kingdom of Maintenon, and with my own hands
+gather on my walls those velvet, brilliant peaches, which grow so fine in
+those districts.  But if the King commands me to remain at Court, and
+form our young Bavarian Princess in the manners of this country, have I
+the right, in good conscience, to refuse?"
+
+"Your long services have gained you the right to desire and take your
+retirement," I said to her; "in your place, I should insist upon the
+necessities of my health.  And the Court of France will not fall nor
+change its physiognomy, even if a German or Iroquois Dauphine should
+courtesy awry, or in bad taste."
+
+Madame de Maintenon began to laugh, and assured me that "her post as lady
+in waiting would be an actual burden, if the King had destined her for it
+in spite of herself, and there should be no means of withdrawing from
+it."
+
+At this speech I saw clearly that things were already fixed.  Not wishing
+to call upon me the reproaches of my lord, I carried the conversation no
+further.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The "Powder of Inheritance."--The Chambre Ardente.--The Comtesse de
+Soissons's Arrest Decreed.--The Marquise de Montespan Buys Her
+Superintendence of the Queen's Council.--Madame de Soubise.--Madame de
+Maintenon and the King.
+
+At the time of the poisonings committed by Madame de Brinvilliers,
+the Government obtained evidence that a powder, called "the powder of
+inheritance," was being sold in Paris, by means of which impatient heirs
+shortened the days of unfortunate holders, and entered into possession
+before their time.
+
+Two obscure women, called La Vigoureuse and La Voisine, were arrested,
+having been caught redhanded.  Submitted to the question, they confessed
+their crime, and mentioned several persons, whom they qualified as
+"having bought and made use of the said powder of inheritance."
+
+We saw suddenly the arrest of the Marechal de Luxembourg, the Princesse
+de Tingry, and many others.  The 'Chambre Ardente'--[The French Star
+Chamber.]--issued a warrant also to seize the person of the Duchesse de
+Bouillon and the Comtesse de Soissons, the celebrated nieces of the
+Cardinal Mazarin, sisters-in-law, both, of my niece De Nevers, who was
+dutifully afflicted thereby.
+
+The Comtesse de Soissons had possessed hitherto an important office,
+whose functions suited me in every respect,--that of the superintendence
+of the Queen's household and council.  I bought this post at a
+considerable price.  The Queen, who had never cared for the Countess,
+did me the honour of assuring me that she preferred me to the other,
+when I came to take my oath in her presence.
+
+Madame la Princesse de Rohan-Soubise had wished to supplant me at that
+time, and I was aware of her constant desire to obtain a fine post at
+Court.  She loved the King, who had shown her his favours in more than
+one circumstance; but, as she had a place neither in his esteem nor in
+his affection, I did not fear her.  I despatched to her, very adroitly,
+a person of her acquaintance, who spoke to her of the new household of a
+Dauphine, and gave her the idea of soliciting for herself the place of
+lady in waiting, destined for Madame de Maintenon.
+
+The Princesse de Soubise put herself immediately amongst the candidates.
+She wrote to the King, her friend, a pressing and affectionate letter,
+to which he did not even reply.  She wrote one next in a more majestic
+and appropriate style.  It was notified to her that she was forbidden to
+reappear at Court.
+
+The prince had resolutely taken his course.  He wished to put Madame de
+Maintenon in evidence, and what he has once decided he abandons never.
+
+I was soon aware that costumes of an unheard-of magnificence were being
+executed for the Marquise.  Gold, silver, precious stones abounded.
+I was offered a secret view of her robe of ceremony, with a long mantle
+train.  I saw this extraordinarily rich garment, and was sorry in advance
+for the young stranger, whose lady in waiting could not fail to eclipse
+her in everything.
+
+I then put some questions to myself,--asked myself severely if my
+disapproval sprang from natural haughtiness, which would have been
+possible, and even excusable, or whether, mingled with all that, was some
+little agitation of jealousy and emulation.
+
+I collected together a crowd of slight and scattered circumstances;
+and in this union of several small facts, at first neglected and almost
+unperceived, I distinguished on the part of the King a gradual and
+increasing attachment for the governess, and at the same time a
+negligence in regard to me,--a coldness, a cooling-down, at least, and
+that sort of familiarity, close parent of weariness, which comes to sight
+in the midst of courtesies and attentions the most satisfying and the
+most frequent.
+
+The King, in the old days, never glanced towards my clock till as late as
+possible, and always at the last moment, at the last extremity.  Now he
+cast his eyes on it a score of times in half an hour.  He contradicted me
+about trifles.  He explained to me ingeniously the faults, or alleged
+faults, of my temper and character.  If it was a question of Madame de
+Maintenon, she was of a birth equal and almost superior to the rest of
+the Court.  He forgot himself so far as to quote before me the subtilty
+of her answers or the delight of her most intimate conversation.  Did he
+wish to describe a noble carriage, an attitude at once easy and
+distinguished, it was Madame de Maintenon's.  She possessed this, she
+possessed that, she possessed everything.
+
+Soon there was not the slightest doubt left to me; and I knew, as did the
+whole Court, that he openly visited the Marquise, and was glad to pass
+some moments there.
+
+These things, in truth, never lacked some plausible pretext, and he chose
+the time when Madame de Montchevreuil and Mademoiselle de Nantes were
+presenting their homages to Madame de Maintenon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Marie Louise, Daughter of Henrietta of England, Betrothed to the King of
+Spain.--Her Affliction.--Jealousy of the King, Her Husband.
+
+The unfortunate lady, Henrietta of England, had left, at her death, two
+extremely young girls, one of them, indeed, being still in the cradle.
+The new Madame was seized with good-will for these two orphans to such an
+extent as to complain to the King.  They were brought up with the
+greatest care; they were, both of them, pretty and charming.
+
+The elder was named Marie Louise.  It was this one whom Monsieur destined
+in his own mind for Monseigneur le Dauphin; and the Princess, accustomed
+early to this prospect, had insensibly adapted to it her mind and hope.
+Young, beautiful, agreeable, and charming as her mother, she created
+already the keenest sensation at Court, and the King felt an inclination
+to cherish her as much as he had loved Madame.  But the excessive freedom
+which this alliance would not have failed to give his brother, both with
+his son-in-law and nephew, and with the Ministry, prevented his Majesty
+from giving way to this penchunt for Marie Louise.  On the contrary, he
+consented to her marriage with the King of Spain, and the news of it was
+accordingly carried to Monsieur le Duc d'Orleans.  He and his wife felt
+much annoyance at it.  But after communications of that kind there was
+scarcely any course open to be taken than that of acquiescence.  Monsieur
+conveyed the news to his beloved daughter, and, on hearing that she was
+to be made Queen of Spain, this amiable child uttered loud lamentations.
+
+When she went to Versailles to thank the King, her uncle, her fine eyes
+were still suffused with tears.  The few words which she uttered were
+mingled with sighing and weeping; and when she saw the indifference of
+her cousin, who felicitated her like the rest, she almost fainted with
+grief and regret.
+
+"My dear cousin," said this dull-witted young lord, "I shall count the
+hours until you go to Spain.  You will send me some 'touru', for I am
+very fond of it?"
+
+The King could not but find this reflection of his son very silly and out
+of place.  But intelligence is neither to be given nor communicated by
+example.  His Majesty had to support to the end this son, legitimate as
+much as you like, but altogether in degree, and with a person which
+formed a perpetual contrast with the person of the King.  It was my Duc
+du Maine who should have been in the eminent position of Monseigneur.
+Nature willed it so.  She had proved it sufficiently by lavishing all her
+favours on him, all her graces; but the laws of convention and usage
+would not have it.  His Majesty has made this same reflection, groaning,
+more than once.
+
+Marie Louise, having been married by proxy, in the great Chapel of Saint
+Germain, where the Cardinal de Bouillon blessed the ring in his quality
+of Grand Almoner of France, left for that Spain which her young heart
+distrusted.
+
+Her beauty and charms rendered her precious to the monarch, utterly
+melancholy and devout as he was.  He did not delay subjecting her to the
+wretched, petty, tiresome, and absurd etiquette of that Gothic Court.
+Mademoiselle submitted to all these nothings, seeing she had been able to
+submit to separation from France.  She condemned herself to the most
+fastidious observances and the most sore privations, which did not much
+ameliorate her lot.
+
+A young Castilian lord, almost mad himself, thought fit to find this
+Queen pretty, and publicly testify his love for her.  The jealousy of the
+religious King flared up like a funeral torch.  He conceived a hatred of
+his wife, reserved and innocent though she was.  She died cruelly by
+poison.  And Monseigneur le Dauphin probably cried, after his manner:
+
+"What a great pity!  She won't send me the touru!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+The Dauphine of Bavaria.--The Confessor with Spurs.--Madame de Maintenon
+Disputes with Bossuet.--He Opposes to Her Past Ages and History.--
+The Military Absolution.
+
+Eight months after the wedding of Marie Louise, we witnessed the arrival
+of Anne Marie Christine, Princess of Bavaria, daughter of the Elector
+Ferdinand.  The King and Monseigneur went to receive her at Vitry-le-
+Francais, and then escorted her to Chalons, where the Queen was awaiting
+her.
+
+The Cardinal de Bouillon celebrated the marriage in the cathedral church
+of this third-class town.  The festivities and jubilations there lasted a
+week.
+
+The King had been very willing to charge me with the arrangement of the
+baskets of presents destined for the Dauphine; I acquitted myself of this
+commission with French taste and a sentiment of what was proper.  When
+the Queen saw all these magnificent gifts placed and spread out in a
+gallery, she cried out, and said:
+
+"Things were not done so nobly for me; and yet, I can say without vanity,
+I was of a better house than she."
+
+This remark paints the Queen, Maria Theresa, better than anything which
+could be said.  Can one wonder, after that, that she should have brought
+into the world an hereditary prince who so keenly loves 'touru', and asks
+for it!
+
+Madame de Maintenon and M. Bossuet had gone to receive the Princess of
+Schelestadt.  When she was on her husband's territory, and it was
+necessary, to confess her for the sacrament of matrimony, she was
+strangely embarrassed.  They had not remembered to bring a chaplain of
+her own nation for her; and she could not confess except in the German
+tongue.
+
+Madame de Maintenon, who is skilled in all matters of religion, said to
+the prelate: "I really think, monsieur, that, having educated Monsieur le
+Dauphin, you ought to know a little German,--you who have composed the
+treatise on universal history."
+
+The Bishop of Meaux excused himself, saying that he knew Greek, Syriac,
+and even Hebrew; but that, through a fatality, he was ignorant of the
+German language.  A trumpeter was then sent out to ask if there was not
+in the country a Catholic priest who was a German, or acquainted with the
+German tongue.  Luckily one was found, and Madame de Maintenon, who is
+very, pedantic, even in the matter of toilet and ornaments, trembled with
+joy and thanked God for it.  But what was her astonishment when they came
+to bring her the priest!  He was in coloured clothes, a silk doublet,
+flowing peruke, and boots and spurs.  The lady in waiting rated him
+severely, and was tempted to send him back.  But Bossuet--a far greater
+casuist than she--decided that in these urgent cases one need hold much
+less to forms.  They were contented with taking away the spurs from this
+amphibious personage; they pushed him into a confessional,--the curtain
+of which he was careful to draw before himself,--and they brought the
+Bavarian Princess, who, not knowing the circumstances, confessed the sins
+of her whole life to this sort of soldier.
+
+Madame de Maintenon always had this general confession on her conscience;
+she scolded Bossuet for it as a sort of sacrilege, and the latter, who
+was only difficult and particular with simple folk, quoted historical
+examples in which soldiers, on the eve of battle, had confessed to their
+general.
+
+"Yes," said the King, on hearing these quotations from the imperturbable
+man; "that must have been to the Bishop of Puy or the Bishop of Orange,
+who, in effect, donned the shield and cuirass at the time of the crusades
+against the Saracens; or perhaps, again, to the Cardinal de la Valette
+d'Epernon, who commanded our armies under Richelieu successfully."
+
+"No, Sire," replied the Bishop; "to generals who were simply soldiers."
+
+"But," said the King, "were the confessions, then, null?"
+
+"Sire," added the Bishop of Meaux, "circumstances decide everything.
+Of old, in the time of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and much later still,
+confessions of Christians were public,--made in a loud voice; sometimes a
+number together, and always in the open air.  Those of soldiers that I
+have quoted to madame were somewhat of the kind of these confessions of
+the primitive Church; and to-day, still, at the moment when battle is
+announced, a military almoner gives the signal for confession.  The
+regiments confess on their knees before the Most High, who hears them;
+and the almoner, raised aloft on a pile of drums, holds the crucifix in
+one hand, and with the other gives the general absolution to eighty
+thousand soldiers at once."
+
+This clear and precise explanation somewhat calmed Madame de Maintenon,
+and Madame la Dauphine,--displeased at what she had done on arriving,--
+in order to be regular, learned to confess in French.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Pere de la Chaise.--The Jesuits.--The Pavilion of Belleville.--
+The Handkerchief.
+
+Pere de la Chaise has never done me good or ill; I have no motives for
+conciliating him, no reason to slander him.  I am ignorant if he were the
+least in the world concerned, at the epoch of the Grand Jubilee, with
+those ecclesiastical attempts of which Bossuet had constituted himself
+spokesman.  Pere de la Chaise has in his favour a great evenness of
+temper and character; an excellent tone, which comes to him from his
+birth; a conciliatory philosophy, which renders him always master of his
+condition and of his metier.  He is, in a single individual, the happy
+combination of several men, that is to say, be is by turns, and as it may
+be needful, a man indulgent or severe in his preaching; a man of
+abstinence, or a good feeder; a man of the world, or a cenobite; a man of
+his breviary, or a courtier.  He knows that the sins of woodcutters and
+the sins of kings are not of the same family, and that copper and gold
+are not weighed in the same scales.
+
+He is a Jesuit by his garb; be is much more so than they are by his
+'savoir-vivre'.  His companions love the King because he is the King; he
+loves him, and pities him because he sees his weakness.  He shows for his
+penitent the circumspection and tenderness of a father, and in the long
+run he has made of him a spoiled child.
+
+This Pere de la Chaise fell suddenly ill, and with symptoms so alarming
+that the cabals each wished to appropriate this essential post of
+confessor.
+
+The Jansenists would have been quite willing to lay hold of it.  The
+Jesuits, and principally the cordons bleus, did not quit the pillow of
+the sick man for an instant.
+
+The King had himself informed of his condition every half-hour.  There
+was a bulletin, as there is for potentates.  One evening, when the
+doctors were grave on his account, I saw anxiety and affliction painted
+on the visage of his Majesty.
+
+"Where shall I find his like?"  said he to me.  "Where shall I find such
+knowledge, such indulgence, such kindness?  The Pere de la Chaise knew
+the bottom of my heart; he knew, as an intelligent man, how to reconcile
+religion with nature; and when duty brings me to the foot of his
+tribunal, as a humble Christian, he never forgets that royalty, cannot be
+long on its knees, and he accompanies with his attentions and with
+deference the religious commands which he is bound to impose on me."
+
+"I hope that God will preserve him to you," I replied to his Majesty;
+"but let us suppose the case in which this useful and precious man should
+see his career come to an end; will you grant still this mark of
+confidence and favour to the Jesuits?  All the French being your
+subjects, would it not be fitting to grant this distinction sometimes to
+the one and sometimes to the other?  You would, perhaps, extinguish by
+this that hate or animosity by which the Jesuits see themselves assailed,
+which your preference draws upon them."
+
+"I do not love the Jesuits with that affection that you seem to suggest,"
+replied the monarch.  "I look upon them as men of instruction, as a
+learned and well-governed corporation; but as for their attachment for
+me, I know how to estimate it.  This kind of people, strangers to the
+soft emotions of nature, have no affection or love for anything.  Before
+the triumph of the King my grandfather, they intrigued and exerted
+themselves to bring about his fall; he opened the gates of Paris, and the
+Jesuits, like the Capuchins, at once recognised him and bowed down before
+him.  King Henri, who knew what men are, pretended to forget the past; he
+pronounced himself decidedly in favour of the Jesuits because this body
+of teachers, numerous, rich, and of good credit, had just pronounced
+itself in favour of him.
+
+"It was, then, a reconciliation between power and power, and the politics
+of my grandfather were to survive him and become mine, since the same
+elements exist and I am encamped on the same ground.  If God takes away
+from me my poor Pere de la Chaise, I shall feel this misfortune deeply,
+because I shall lose in him, not a Jesuit, not a priest, but a good
+companion, a trusty and proved friend.  If I lose him, I shall assuredly
+be inconsolable for him; but it will be very necessary for me to take his
+successor from the Grand Monastery of the Rue Saint Antoine.  This
+community knows me by heart, and I do not like innovations."
+
+The successor of the Pere de la Chaise was already settled with the
+Jesuit Fathers; but this man of the vanguard was spared marching and
+meeting danger.  The Court was not condemned to see and salute a new
+face; the old confessor recovered his health.  His Majesty experienced a
+veritable joy at it, a joy as real as if the Prince of Orange had died.
+
+Wishing to prove to the good convalescent how dear his preservation was
+to him, the King released him from his function for the rest of the year,
+and begged him to watch over his health, the most important of his duties
+and his possessions.
+
+Having learnt that they had neither terraces nor gardens at the grand
+monastery of the Rue Saint Antoine, his Majesty made a present to his
+confessor of a very agreeable house in the district of Belleville, and
+caused to be transported thither all kinds of orange-trees, rare shrubs,
+and flowers from Versailles.  These tasteful attentions, these filial
+cares, diverted the capital somewhat; but Paris is a rich soil, where the
+strangest things are easily received and naturalised without an effort.
+
+The Pare de la Chaise had his chariot with his arms on it, and his family
+livery; and as the income from his benefices remained to him, joined to
+his office of confessor, he continued to have every day a numerous court
+of young abbes, priests well on in years, barons, countesses, marquises,
+magistrates and colonels, who came to Belleville in anxiety about his
+health, to congratulate themselves upon his convalescence, to ask of him,
+with submission and reverence, a bishopric, an archbishopric,
+a cardinal's hat, an important priory, a canonry, or an abbey.
+
+Having myself to place the three daughters of one of my relatives, I went
+to see the noble confessor at his pavilion of Belleville.  He received me
+with the most marked distinction, and was lavish in acts of gratitude for
+all the benefits of the King.
+
+As he crossed his salon, in order to accompany me and escort me out, he
+let his white handkerchief fall; three bishops at once flung themselves
+upon it, and there was a struggle as to who should pick it up to give it
+back to him.
+
+I related to the King what I had seen.  He said to me: "These prelates
+honour my confessor, looking upon him as a second me."  In fact, the sins
+of the King could only throw his confessor into relief and add to his
+merit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Mademoiselle de Fontanges.--The Pavilions of the Garden of Flora.--Rapid
+Triumph of the Favourite.--Her Retreat to Val-de-grace.--Her Death.
+
+Madame de Maintenon was already forty-four years old, and appeared to be
+only thirty.  This freshness, that she owed either to painstaking care or
+to her happy and quite peculiar constitution, gave her that air of youth
+which fascinated the eyes of the courtiers and those of the monarch
+himself.  I wished one day to annoy her by bringing the conversation on
+this subject, which could not be diverting to her.  I began by putting
+the question generally, and I then named several of our superannuated
+beauties who still fluttered in the smiling gardens of Flora without
+having the youth of butterflies.
+
+"There are butterflies of every age and colour in the gardens of Flora,"
+said she, catching the ball on the rebound.  "There are presumptuous
+ones, whom the first breath of the zephyr despoils of their plumage and
+discolours; others, more reserved and less frivolous, keep their glamour
+and prestige for a much longer time.  For the rest, the latter seem to me
+to rejoice without being vain in their advantages.  And at bottom, what
+should any insect gain by being proud?"
+
+"Very little," I answered her, "since being dressed as a butterfly does
+not prevent one from being an insect, and the best sustained preservation
+lasts at most till the day after to-morrow."
+
+The King entered.  I started speaking of a young person, extremely
+beautiful, who had just appeared at Court, and would eclipse, in my
+opinion, all who had shone there before her.
+
+"What do you call her?"  asked his Majesty.  "To what family does she
+belong?"
+
+"She comes from the provinces," I continued, "just like silk, silver, and
+gold.  Her parents desire to place her among the maids of honour of the
+Queen.  Her name is Fontanges, and God has never made anything so
+beautiful."
+
+As I said these words I watched the face of the Marquise.  She listened
+to this portrayal with attention, but without appearing moved by it, such
+is her power of suppressing her natural feeling.  The King only added
+these words:
+
+"This young person needs be quite extraordinary, since Madame de
+Montespan praises her, and praises her with so much vivacity.  However,
+we shall see."
+
+Two days afterwards, Mademoiselle de Fontanges was seen in the salon of
+the grand table.  The King, in spite of his composure, had looks and
+attentions for no one else.
+
+This excessive preoccupation struck the Queen, who, marking the
+blandishments of the young coquette and the King's response, guessed the
+whole future of this encounter; and in her heart was almost glad at it,
+seeing that my turn had come.
+
+Mademoiselle de Fontanges, given to the King by her shameless family,
+feigned love and passion for the monarch, as though he had returned by
+enchantment to his twentieth year.
+
+As for him, he too appeared to us to forget all dates.  I know that he
+was only now forty-one years old, and having been the finest man in the
+world, he could not but preserve agreeable vestiges of a once striking
+beauty.  But his young conquest had hardly entered on her eighteenth
+year, and this difference could not fail to be plain to the most
+inattentive, or most indulgent eyes.
+
+The King, with a sort of anticipatory resignation, had for six or seven
+years greatly simplified his appearance.  We had seen him, little by
+little, reform that Spanish and chivalric costume with which he once
+embellished his first loves.  The flowing plumes no longer floated over
+his forehead, which had become pensive and quite serious.  The diagonal,
+scarf was suppressed, and the long boots, with gold and silver
+embroidery, were no longer seen.  To please his new divinity, the monarch
+suddenly enough rejuvenated his attire.  The most elegant stuffs became
+the substance of his garments; feathers reappeared.  He joined to them
+emeralds and diamonds.
+
+Allegorical comedies, concerts on the waters recommenced.  Triumphant
+horse-races set the whole Court abob and in movement.  There was a fresh
+carousal; there was all that resembles the enthusiasms of youthful
+affection, and the deliriums of youth.  The youth alone was not there,
+at least in proportion, assortment, and similarity.
+
+All that I was soliciting for twelve years, Mademoiselle de Fontanges had
+only to desire for a week.  She was created duchess at her debut; and the
+lozenge of her escutcheon was of a sudden adorned with a ducal coronet,
+and a peer's mantle.
+
+I did not deign to pay attention to this outrage; at least, I made a
+formal resolution never to say a single word on it.
+
+The King came no less from time to time, to pay me a visit, and to talk
+to me, as of old, of operas and his hunting.  I endured his conversation
+with a philosophical phlegm.  He scarcely suspected the change in me.
+
+At the chase, one day, his nymph, whom nothing could stop, had her knot
+of riband caught and held by a branch; the royal lover compelled the
+branch to restore the knot, and went and offered it to his Amazon.
+Singular and sparkling, although lacking in intelligence, she carried
+herself this knot of riband to the top of her hair, and fixed it there
+with a long pin.
+
+Fortune willed it that this coiffure, without order or arrangement,
+suited her face, and suited it greatly.  The King was the first to
+congratulate her on it; all the courtiers applauded it, and this coiffure
+of the chase became the fashion of the day.
+
+All the ladies, and the Queen herself, found themselves obliged to adopt
+it.  Madame de Maintenon submitted herself to it, like the others.  I
+alone refused to sacrifice to the idol, and my knee, being once more
+painful, would not bend before Baal.
+
+With the exception of the general duties of the sovereignty, the prince
+appeared to have forgotten everything for his flame.  The Pere de la
+Chaise, who had returned to his post, regarded this fresh incident with
+his philosophic calm, and congratulated himself on seeing the monarch
+healed of at least one of his passions.
+
+I had always taken the greatest care to respect the Queen; and since my
+star condemned me to stand in her shoes, I did not spare myself the
+general attentions which two well-born people owe one another, and which,
+at least, prove a lofty education.
+
+The Duchesse de Fontanges, doubtless, believed herself Queen, because she
+had the public homage and the King.  This imprudent and conceited
+schoolgirl had the face to pass before her sovereign without stopping,
+and without troubling to courtesy.
+
+The Infanta reddened with disapproval, and persuaded herself, by way of
+consolation, that Fontanges had lost her senses or was on the road to
+madness.
+
+Beautiful and brilliant as the flowers, the Duchess, like them, passed
+swiftly away.  Her pregnancy, by reason of toilsome rides, hunting
+parties, and other agitations, became complicated.  From the eighth month
+she fell into a fever, into exhaustion and languor.  The terror that took
+possession of her imagination caused her to desire a sojourn in a convent
+as a refuge of health, where God would see her nearer and, perhaps, come
+to her aid.
+
+She had herself transported during the night to the House of the Ladies
+of Val-de-Grace, and desired that they should place in her chamber
+several relics from their altars.
+
+Her confinement was not less laboured and sinister.  When she saw that
+all the assistance of art could not stop the bleeding, with which her
+deep bed was flooded, she caused the King to be summoned, embraced him
+tenderly, in the midst of sobs and tears, and died in the night,
+pronouncing the name of God and the name of the King, the objects of her
+love and of fears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Madame de Sevigne.--Madame de Grignan.--Madame de Montespan at the
+Carmelites.--Madame de la Valliere.--These Two Great Ruins Console One
+Another.--An Angel of Sweetness, Goodness, and Kindness.
+
+Fifteen or twenty days before the death of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, my
+sister and I were taking a walk in the new woods of Versailles.  We met
+the Marquise de Sevigne near the canal; she was showing these marvellous
+constructions to her daughter, the Comtesse de Grignan.  They greeted us
+with their charming amiability, and, after having spoken of several
+indifferent matters, the Marquise said to me: "We saw, five or six days
+ago, a person, madame, of whom you were formerly very fond, and who
+charged us to recall her to the memory of her friends.  You are still of
+that number,--I like to think so, and our commission holds good where you
+are concerned, if you will allow it."
+
+Then she mentioned to me that poor Duchesse de la Valliere, to whom I was
+once compelled by my unhappy star to give umbrage, and whom, in my fatal
+thoughtlessness, I had afflicted without desiring it.
+
+Tears came into my eyes; Madame de Sevigne saw them, and expressed her
+regret at having caused me pain.  Madame de Thianges and I asked her if
+my old friend was much changed.  She and Madame de Grignan assured us
+that she was fresh, in good health, and that her face appeared more
+beautiful.  On the next day I wished absolutely to see her, and drove to
+the Carmelites.
+
+On seeing my pretty cripple, who hobbled among us with so great a charm,
+I uttered a cry, which for a moment troubled her.  She sank down to
+salute the crucifix, as custom demands, and, after her short prayer, she
+came to me.  "I did not mention your name to Mesdames de Sevigne," said
+she; "but, however, I am obliged to them, since they have been able to
+procure me the pleasure of seeing you once more."
+
+"The general opinion of the Court, and in the world, my dear Duchess,"
+answered I, "is that I brought about your disgrace myself; and the
+public, that loved you, has not ceased to reproach me with your
+misfortune."
+
+"The public is very kind still to occupy itself with me," she answered;
+"but it is wrong in that, as in so many other matters.  My retirement
+from the world is not a misfortune, and I never suspected that the soul
+could find such peace and satisfaction in these silent solitudes.
+
+"The first days were painful to me, I admit it, owing to the
+inexpressible difference which struck me between what I found here and
+what I had left elsewhere.  But just as the eye accustoms itself, little
+by little, to the feeble glimmer of a vault, in the same way my body has
+accustomed itself to the roughness of my new existence, and my heart to
+all its great privations.
+
+"If life had not to finish, in fulfilment of a solemn, universal, and
+inevitable decree, the constraint that I have put upon myself might at
+length become oppressive, and my yoke prove somewhat heavy.  But all that
+will finish soon, for all undertakings come to an end.  I left you young,
+beautiful, adored, and triumphant in the land of enchantments.  But six
+years have passed, and they assure me that your own afflictions have
+come, and that you, yourself, have been forced to drink the bitter cup of
+deprivation."
+
+At these words, pronounced in a melancholy and celestial voice, I felt as
+though my heart were broken, and burst into tears.
+
+"I pity you, Athenais," she resumed.  "Is, then, what I have been told
+lightly, and almost in haste, only too certain for you?  How is it you
+did not expect it?  How could you believe him constant and immutable,
+after what happened to me?
+
+"To-day, I make no secret to you of it, and I say it with the peaceful
+indifference which God has generously granted me, after such dolorous
+tribulations.  I make no secret of it to you, Athenais; a thousand times
+you plunged the sword and dagger into my heart, when, profiting by my
+confidence in you, by my sense of entire security, you permitted your own
+inclination to substitute itself for mine, and a young man seething with
+desires to be attracted by your charms.  These unlimited sufferings
+exhausted, I must believe, all the sensibility of my soul.  And when this
+corrosive flame had completely devoured my grief, a new existence grew up
+in me; I no longer saw in the father of my children other than a young
+prince, accustomed to see his dominating will fulfilled in everything.
+Knowing how little in this matter he is master of himself, he who knows
+so well how to be master of himself in everything to do with his numerous
+inferiors, I deplored the facility he enjoys from his attractions, from
+his wealth, from his power to dazzle the hearts which he desires to move
+and subdue.
+
+"Recognise these truths, my dear Marquise," she added, "and gain, for it
+is time, a just idea of your position.  After the unhappiness I felt at
+being loved no longer, I should have quitted the Court that very instant,
+if I had been permitted to bring up and tend my poor children.  They were
+too young to abandon!  I stayed still in the midst of you, as the swallow
+hovers and flits among the smoke of the fire, in order to watch over and
+save her little ones.  Do not wait till disdain or authority mingles in
+the matter.  Do not come to the sad necessity of resisting a monarch,
+and of detesting to the point of scandal that which you have so publicly
+loved; pity him, but depart.  This kind of intimacy, once broken, cannot
+be renewed.  However skilfully it may be patched up, the rent always
+reappears."
+
+"My good Louise," I replied to the amiable Carmelite, "your wise counsels
+touch me, persuade me, and are nothing but the truth.  But in listening
+to you I feel overwhelmed; and that strength which you knew how to gain,
+and show to the world, your former companion will never possess.
+
+"I see with astonished eyes the supernatural calm which reigns in your
+countenance; your health seems to me a prodigy, your beauty was never so
+ravishing; but this barbarous garb pierces me to the heart.
+
+"The King does not yet hate me; he shows me even a remnant of respect,
+with which he would colour his indifference.  Permit me to ask from him
+for you an abbey like that of Fontevrault, where the felicities of
+sanctuary and of the world are all in the power of my sister.  He will
+ask nothing better than to take you out, be assured."
+
+"Speak to him of me," answered Louise; "I do not oppose that; but leave
+me until the end the role of obedience and humility that his fault and
+mine impose on me.  Why should he wish that I should command others,--
+I who did not know how to command myself at an epoch when my innocence
+was so dear to me, and when I knew that, in losing that, one is lost?"
+
+As she said these words two nuns came to announce her Serene Highness,
+that is to say, her daughter, the Princesse de Conti.  I prayed Madame de
+la Valliere to keep between ourselves the communications that had just
+taken place in the intimacy of confidence.  She promised me with her
+usual candour.  I made a profound reverence to the daughter, embraced the
+mother weeping, and regained my carriage, which the Princess must have
+remarked on entering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Reflections.--The Future.--The Refuge of Foresight.--Community of Saint
+Joseph.--Wicked Saying of Bossuet.
+
+I wept much during the journey; and to save the spectacle of my grief
+from the passers-by, I was at the pains to lower the curtains.  I passed
+over in my mind all that the Duchess had said to me.  It was very easy
+for me to understand that the monarch's heart had escaped me, and that,
+owing to his character, all resistance, all contradiction would be vain.
+The figure, as it had been supernumerary and on sufferance, which the
+Duchess had made in the midst of the Court when she ceased to be loved,
+returned to my memory completely, and I felt I had not the courage to
+drink a similar cup of humiliation.
+
+I reminded myself of what the prince had told me several times in those
+days when his keen affection for me led him to wish for my happiness,
+even in the future,--even after his death, if I were destined to survive
+him.
+
+"You ought," he said to me, at those moments, "you ought to choose and
+assure yourself beforehand of an honourable retreat; for it is rarely
+that a king accords his respect or his good-will to the beloved
+confidante of his predecessor."
+
+Not wishing to ask a refuge of any one, but, on the contrary, being
+greatly set upon ruling in my own house, I resolved to build myself, not
+a formal convent like Val-de-Grace or Fontevrault, but a pretty little
+community, whose nuns, few in number, would owe me their entire
+existence, which would necessarily attach them to all my interests.
+I held to this idea.  I charged my intendant to seek for me a site
+spacious enough for my enterprise; and when he had found it, had showed
+it to me, and had satisfied me with it, I had what rambling buildings
+there were pulled down, and began, with a sort of joy, the excavations
+and foundations.
+
+The first blow of the hammer was struck, by some inconceivable fortuity,
+at the moment when the Duchesse de Fontanges expired.  Her death did not
+weaken my resolutions nor slacken my ardour.  I got away quite often to
+cast an eye over the work, and ordered my architect to second my
+impatience and spur on the numerous workmen.
+
+The rumour was current in Paris that the example of "Soeur Louise" had
+touched me, and that I was going to take the veil in my convent.  I took
+no notice of this fickle public, and persisted wisely in my plan.
+
+The unexpected and almost sudden decease of Mademoiselle de Fontanges had
+singularly moved the King.  Extraordinary and almost incredible to
+relate, he was for a whole week absent from the Council.  His eyes had
+shed so many tears that they were swollen and unrecognisable.  He shunned
+the occasions when there was an assembly, buried himself in his private
+apartments or in his groves, and resembled, in every trait, Orpheus
+weeping for his fair Eurydice, and refusing to be consoled.
+
+I should be false to others and to myself if I were to say that his
+extreme grief excited my compassion; but I should equally belie the truth
+if I gave it to be understood that his "widowhood" gave me pleasure,
+and that I congratulated myself on his sorrow and bitterness.
+
+He came to see me when he found himself presentable, and, for the first
+few days, I abstained from all reprisal and any allusion.  The
+innumerable labours of his State soon threw him, in spite of himself,
+into those manifold distractions which, in their nature, despise or
+absorb the sensibilities of the soul.  He resumed, little by little, his
+accustomed serenity, and, at the end of the month, appeared to have got
+over it.
+
+"What," he asked me, "are those buildings with which you are busy in
+Paris, opposite the Ladies of Belle-Chasse?  I hear of a convent; is it
+your intention to retire?"
+
+"It is a 'refuge of foresight,'" I answered him.  "Who can count upon the
+morrow?  And after what has befallen Mademoiselle de Fontanges, we must
+consider ourselves as persons already numbered, who wait only for the
+call."
+
+He sighed, and soon spoke of something else.
+
+I reminded myself that, to speak correctly, I had in Paris no habitation
+worthy of my children and of my quality.  That little hotel in the Rue
+Saint Andre-des-Arcs I could count for no more than a little box.
+I sought amongst my papers for a design of a magnificent hotel which I
+had obtained from the famous Blondel.  I found it without difficulty,
+with full elevations and sections.  The artist had adroitly imitated in
+it the beautiful architecture of the Louvre; this fair palace would suit
+me in every respect.
+
+My architect, at a cursory glance, judged that the construction and
+completion of this edifice would easily cost as much as eighteen hundred
+thousand livres.  This expense being no more than I could afford, I
+commissioned him to choose me a spacious site for the buildings and
+gardens over by Roule and La Pepiniere.
+
+Not caring to superintend several undertakings at once, I desired, before
+everything, that my house in the Faubourg Saint Germain should be
+complete and when the building and the chapel were in a condition to
+receive the little colony, I dedicated my "refuge of foresight" to Saint
+Joseph, the respectful spouse of the Holy Virgin and foster-father of the
+Child Jesus.  This agreeable mansion lacked a large garden.  I felt a
+sensible regret for this, especially for the sake of my inmates; but
+there was a little open space furnished with vines and fruit-walls, and
+one of the largest courtyards in the whole of the Faubourg Saint Germain.
+
+Having always loved society, I had multiplied in the two principal blocks
+of the sleeping-rooms and the entrance-hall complete apartments for the
+lady inmates.  And a proof that I was neither detested by the world nor
+unconsidered is that all these apartments were sought after and occupied
+as soon as the windows were put in and the painting done.  My own
+apartment was simple, but of a majestic dignity.  It communicated with
+the chapel, where my tribune, closed with a handsome window, was in face
+of the altar.
+
+I decided, once for all, that the Superior should be my nomination whilst
+God should leave me in this world, but that this right should not pass on
+to my heirs.  The bell of honour rang for twenty minutes every time I
+paid a visit to these ladies; and I only had incense at high mass, and at
+the Magnificat, in my quality of foundress.
+
+I went from time to time to make retreats, or, to be more accurate,
+vacations, in my House of Saint Joseph.  M. Bossuet solicited the favour
+of being allowed to preach there on the day of the solemn consecration.
+I begged him to preserve himself for my funeral oration.  He answered
+cruelly that there was nothing he could refuse me.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Grow like a dilapidated house; I am only here to repair myself
+He contradicted me about trifles
+Intimacy, once broken, cannot be renewed
+Jealous without motive, and almost without love
+The King replied that "too much was too much"
+The monarch suddenly enough rejuvenated his attire
+There is an exaggeration in your sorrow
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, v5
+by Madame La Marquise De Montespan
+
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