To show further her independence, she soon began to drive her lover to distraction by her caprices and her temper:  “She tantalised, at once rebuffed and excited the King by the most adroit comedies and those coquetries which are the strength of her sex, assuring him that she would be delighted if he would transfer his affection to other ladies.”  And while the favourite was thus revelling in the insolence of her conquest, her supplanted sister was eating out her heart in Paris.  “Her despair was terrible; the trouble of her heart refused consolation, begged for solitude, found vent every moment in cries for Louis.  Those who were around her trembled for her reason, for her life....  Again and again she made up her mind to start for the Court, to make a final appeal to the King, but each time, when the carriage was ready, she burst into tears and fell back upon her bed.”

As for Louis, chilled by the coldness of his mistress, distracted by her whims and rages, his heart often yearned for the woman he had so cruelly discarded; and separation did more than all her tears and caresses could have done, to awake again the love he fancied was dead.

When Madame de la Tournelle paid her first visit as Maitresse en titre to Choisy, nothing would satisfy her but an escort of the noblest ladies in France, including a Princess of the Blood.  Her progress was that of a Queen; and in return for this honour, wrung out of the King’s weakness, she repaid him with weeks of coldness and ill-humour.  She refused to play at cavagnol with him; she barricaded herself in her room, refusing to open to all her lover’s knocking; and vented her vapours on him with, or without, provocation, until, as she considered, she had reduced him to a becoming submission.  Then she used her power and her coquetries to wheedle out of him one concession after another, including a promise by the King to return unopened any letters Madame de Mailly might send to him.  Nor was she content until her sister was finally disposed of by the grant of a small pension and a modest lodging in the Luxembourg.

Before the year closed Madame de la Tournelle was installed in the most luxurious apartments at Versailles, and Louis, now completely caught in her toils, was the slave of her and his senses, flinging himself into all the licence of passion, and reviving the nightly debauches from which the dead Comtesse had weaned him.  And while her lover was thus steeped in sensuality, his mistress was, with infinite tact, pursuing her ambition.  Affecting an indifference to affairs of State, she was gradually, and with seeming reluctance, worming herself into the position of chief Counsellor, and while professing to despise money she was draining the exchequer to feed her extravagance.

Never was King so hopelessly in the toils of a woman as Louis, the well-beloved, in those of Madame de la Tournelle.  He accepted as meekly as a child all her coldness and caprices, her jealousies and her rages; and was ideally happy when, in a gracious mood, she would allow him to assist at her toilette as the reward for some regal present of diamonds, horses, or gowns.