M. de la Roche-Guyon and M. de Liancourt, sons of La Rochefoucauld, who expressed themselves with the same boldness, went so far as to say of their ruler that he was but a stage and tinsel king.  The son-in-law of Louvois accused him of being most courageous in his gallery, but of turning pale on the eve, and at the moment, of an action; and D’Alincourt, son of Villeroi, carried his outrages further still.  No one knows better than myself how unjust these accusations were, and are.  I was sensible of the mortification such a reading must have caused to the most sensitive, the most irritable of princes; but I rejoiced at the humiliation that the lady in waiting felt for her share in this unpardonable correspondence.  The annoyance that I read for some days on her handsome face consoled me, for the time being, for her great success at my expense.

Madame la Princesse de Conti, whom the King, up to this time, had not only cherished but adored, found also, in those documents, the term of excessive favour.  A letter from her to her husband said:  “I have just given myself a maid of honour, wishing to spare Madame de Maintenon the trouble, or the pleasure, of giving me one herself.”

She was summoned to Versailles, as she may very well have expected.  The King, paying no attention to her tears, said to her:  “I believed in your affection; I have done everything to deserve it; it is lamentable to me to be unable to count on it longer.  Your cruel letter is in Madame de Maintenon’s hands.  She will let you read it again before committing it to the fire, and I beg you to inform her what is the harm she has done you.”

“Madame,” said Madame de Maintenon to her, when she saw her before her, “when your amiable mother left this Court, where the slightest prosperity attracts envy, I promised her to take some care of your childhood, and I have kept my word.

“I have always treated you with gentleness and consideration; whence proceeds your hate against me of to-day?  Is your young heart capable of it?  I believed you to be a model of gratitude and goodness.”

“Madame,” replied the young Princess, weeping, “deign to pardon this imprudence of mine and to reconcile me with the King, whom I love so much.”

“I have not the credit which you assume me to have,” replied the lady in waiting, coldly.  “Except for the extreme kindness of the King you would not be where you are, and you take it ill that I should be where I am!  I have neither desired nor solicited the arduous rank that I occupy; I need resignation and obedience to support such a burden.”  Madame de Maintenon resumed her work.  The Princess, not daring to interrupt her silence, made the bow that was expected of her and withdrew.

The Marquis de Louvois, when he read what his own son-in-law dared to write of the monarch, grew pale and swooned away with grief.  He cast himself several times before the feet of his master, asking now the punishment and now the pardon of a criminal and a madman.