In vain Montespan stormed and wept in her fits of jealous rage; in vain did the beautiful de Fontanges seek to lure him to her arms, until death claimed her so tragically before she had well passed her twentieth birthday.  The King had had more than enough of such Delilahs.  Pleasure had palled; peace was what he craved now—­salve for his seared conscience.

When Madame de Maintenon was appointed principal lady-in-waiting to the Dauphine and when, a little later, Louis’ unhappy Queen drew her last breath in her arms, Montespan at last realised that her day of power was over.  She wrote letters to the King begging him not to withdraw his affection from her, but to these appeals Louis was silent; he handed the letters to Madame de Maintenon to answer as she willed.

The Court was quick to realise that a new star had risen; ministers and ambassadors now flocked to the new divinity to consult her and to win her favour.  The governess was hailed as the new Queen of Louis and of France.  The climax came when the King was thrown one day from his horse while hunting, and broke his arm.  It was Madame de Maintenon alone who was allowed to nurse him, and who was by his side night and day.  Before the arm was well again she was standing, thickly veiled, before an improvised altar in the King’s study, with Louis by her side, while the words that made them man and wife were pronounced by Archbishop de Harlay.

The prison-child had now reached the loftiest pinnacle in the land of her birth.  Though she wore no crown, she was Queen of France, wielding a power which few throned ladies have ever known.  Princes and Princesses rose to greet her entry with bows and curtsies; the mother of the coming King called her “aunt”; her rooms, splendid as the King’s, adjoined his; she had the place of honour in the King’s Council Room; the State’s secrets were in her keeping; she guided and controlled the destinies of the nation.  And all this greatness came to her when she had passed her fiftieth year, and when all the grace and bloom of youth were but a distant memory.

The King himself, two years her junior, and still in the prime of his manhood, was her shadow, paying to the plain, middle-aged woman such deference and courtesy as he had never shown to the youth and beauty of her predecessors in his affection.  And she—­thus translated to dizzy heights—­kept a head as cool and a demeanour as modest as when she was “Scarron’s widow,” the convent protegee.  For power and splendour she cared no whit.  Her ambition now, as always, was to be loved for herself, to “play a beautiful part in the world,” and to deserve the respect of all good men.

Her chief pleasure was found away from the pomp and glitter of the Court, among “her children” of the Saint Cyr Convent, which she had founded for the education of the daughters of poor noblemen, over whom she watched with loving and unflagging care.  And yet she was not happy—­not nearly as happy as in the days of her obscure widowhood.  “I am dying of sorrow in the midst of luxury,” she wrote.  And again.  “I cannot bear it.  I wish I were dead.”  Why she was so unhappy, with her Queendom and her environment of love and esteem, and her life of good works, it is impossible to say.  The fact remains, inscrutable, but still fact.