It was a happy inspiration that led Scarron’s widow to the King’s favourite, for Madame de Montespan’s heart, ever better than her life, went out to the gentle woman whom fate was treating so scurvily.  Not content with procuring the pension, she placed her in charge of her nursery, an office of great trust and delicacy; and thus Madame Scarron found herself comfortably installed in the King’s palace with a salary of two thousand crowns a year.  Her day of poverty and independence was at last ended.  She had, in fact, though she little knew it, placed her foot on the ladder, at the summit of which was the dazzling prize of the King’s hand.

Those were happy years which followed.  High in the favour of the King’s mistress, loving the little ones given into her charge as if they were her own children, especially the eldest born, the delicate and warm-hearted Duc de Maine, who was also his father’s darling, Madame had nothing left to wish for in life.  Her days were full of duty, of peace, and contentment.  Even Louis, as he watched the loving care she lavished on his children, began to thaw and to smile on her, and to find pleasure in his visits to the nursery, which grew more and more frequent.  There was a charm in this sweet-eyed, gentle-voiced widow, whose tongue was so skilful in wise and pleasant words.  Her patient devotion deserved recognition.  He gave orders that more fitting apartments should be assigned to Madame—­a suite little less sumptuous than that of Montespan herself; and that money should not be lacking, he made her a gift of two hundred thousand francs, which the provident widow promptly invested in the purchase of the castle and estate of Maintenon.

Such marked favours as these not unnaturally set jealous tongues wagging.  Even Montespan began to grow uneasy, and to wonder what was coming next.  When she ventured to refer sarcastically to the use “Scarron’s widow” had made of his present, Louis silenced her by answering, “In my opinion, Madame de Maintenon has acted very wisely”; thus by a word conferring noble rank on the woman his favourite was already beginning to fear as a rival.

And indeed there were soon to be sufficient grounds for Montespan’s jealously and alarm.  Every day saw Louis more and more under the spell of his children’s governess—­the middle-aged woman whose musical voice, gentle eyes, and wise words of counsel were opening a new and better world to him.  She knew, as well as himself, how sated and weary he was of the cup of pleasure he had now drained to its last dregs of disillusionment; and he listened with eager ears to the words which pointed to him a surer path of happiness.  Even reproof from her lips became more grateful to him than the sweetest flatteries from those of the most beautiful woman who counted but half of her years.

The growing influence of the widow Scarron over the “Sun-King” had already become the chief gossip of the Court.  From the allurements of Montespan, of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, and of de Ludre he loved to escape to the apartments of the soft-voiced woman who cared so much more for his soul than for his smiles.  “His Majesty’s interviews with Madame de Maintenon,” Madame de Sevigne writes, “become more and more frequent, and they last from six in the morning to ten at night, she sitting in one arm-chair, he in another.”