“Very little,” I answered her, “since being dressed as a butterfly does not prevent one from being an insect, and the best sustained preservation lasts at most till the day after to-morrow.”

The King entered.  I started speaking of a young person, extremely beautiful, who had just appeared at Court, and would eclipse, in my opinion, all who had shone there before her.

“What do you call her?” asked his Majesty.  “To what family does she belong?”

“She comes from the provinces,” I continued, “just like silk, silver, and gold.  Her parents desire to place her among the maids of honour of the Queen.  Her name is Fontanges, and God has never made anything so beautiful.”

As I said these words I watched the face of the Marquise.  She listened to this portrayal with attention, but without appearing moved by it, such is her power of suppressing her natural feeling.  The King only added these words: 

“This young person needs be quite extraordinary, since Madame de Montespan praises her, and praises her with so much vivacity.  However, we shall see.”

Two days afterwards, Mademoiselle de Fontanges was seen in the salon of the grand table.  The King, in spite of his composure, had looks and attentions for no one else.

This excessive preoccupation struck the Queen, who, marking the blandishments of the young coquette and the King’s response, guessed the whole future of this encounter; and in her heart was almost glad at it, seeing that my turn had come.

Mademoiselle de Fontanges, given to the King by her shameless family, feigned love and passion for the monarch, as though he had returned by enchantment to his twentieth year.

As for him, he too appeared to us to forget all dates.  I know that he was only now forty-one years old, and having been the finest man in the world, he could not but preserve agreeable vestiges of a once striking beauty.  But his young conquest had hardly entered on her eighteenth year, and this difference could not fail to be plain to the most inattentive, or most indulgent eyes.

The King, with a sort of anticipatory resignation, had for six or seven years greatly simplified his appearance.  We had seen him, little by little, reform that Spanish and chivalric costume with which he once embellished his first loves.  The flowing plumes no longer floated over his forehead, which had become pensive and quite serious.  The diagonal, scarf was suppressed, and the long boots, with gold and silver embroidery, were no longer seen.  To please his new divinity, the monarch suddenly enough rejuvenated his attire.  The most elegant stuffs became the substance of his garments; feathers reappeared.  He joined to them emeralds and diamonds.

Allegorical comedies, concerts on the waters recommenced.  Triumphant horse-races set the whole Court abob and in movement.  There was a fresh carousal; there was all that resembles the enthusiasms of youthful affection, and the deliriums of youth.  The youth alone was not there, at least in proportion, assortment, and similarity.