The pretended amours of Mademoiselle d’Aubigne and the Marquis de Villarceaux, Ninon’s friend, are an invention of malicious envy.  I justified Madame Scarron on the matter before the King, when I asked her for the education of the Princes; and having rendered her this justice, from conviction rather than necessity, I shall certainly not charge her with it to-day.  Madame de Maintenon possesses a fund of philosophy which she does not reveal nor confess to everybody.  She fears God in the manner of Socrates and Plato; and as I have seen her more than once make game, with infinite wit, of the Abbe Gobelin, her confessor, who is a pedant and avaricious, I am persuaded that she knows much more about it than all these proud doctors in theology, and that she would be thoroughly capable of confessing her confessor.

She had remained, then, the friend of Ninon, but at heart and in recollection, without sending her news or seeing her again.  Mademoiselle de l’Enclos, rich, disinterested, and proud of her independent position, learned with pleasure the triumph of her former friend, but without writing to her or congratulating her.  Ninon, by the consent of all those who have come near her, is good-nature itself.  One of her relations, or friends, was a candidate for a vacant post as farmer-general, and besought her to make some useful efforts for him.

“I have no one but Madame de Maintenon,” she replied to this relation.  And the other said to her: 

“Madame de Maintenon?  It is as though you had the King himself!”

Mademoiselle de l’Enclos, trimming her pen with her trusty knife, wrote to the lady in waiting an agreeable and polished letter, one of those letters, careful without stiffness, that one writes, indulging oneself a little with the intention of getting oneself read.

The letter of solicitation seemed so pretty to the lady in waiting that she made the King peruse it.

“This is an excellent opportunity for me,” said the prince at once, “to see with my own eyes this extraordinary, person, of whom I have so long heard talk.  I saw her one day at the opera, but just when she was getting into her carriage; and my incognito did not permit me to approach her.  She seemed to me small, but well made.  Her carriage drove off like a flash.”

To meet this curiosity which the King displayed, it was agreed that Madame de Maintenon, on the pretext of having a better consultation, should summon Mademoiselle de l’Enclos to Versailles, and that in one of the alcoves of the chapel she should be given a place which should put her almost in front of his Majesty.

She arrived some minutes before mass.  Madame de Maintenon received her with marked attention, mingled with reserve, promised her support with the ministers when the affair should be discussed, and made her promise to pass the entire day, at Versailles, for the King was obliged to visit the new gardens at Marly.