and desires.  He had made people talk about him in his earliest youth; he awoke the same buzz of scandal now that he was fifty.  Madame de Maintenon, hoping to reform him, and wishing to constrain him to beget them an heir, made him consent to the bonds of marriage.  She had just discovered a very pretty heiress of very good family, when he married secretly the daughter of a mere ‘procureur du roi’.  The lady in waiting, being unable to undo what had been done, submitted to this unequal alliance; and as her sister-in-law, ennobled by her husband, was none the less a countess, she, too, was presented.

The young person, aged fifteen at the most, was naturally very bashful.  When she found herself in this vast hall, between a double row of persons of importance, whose fixed gaze never left her, she forgot all the bows, all the elaborate courtesies,—­in fine, all the difficult procedure of a formal presentation, that her sister-in-law and dancing-masters had been making her rehearse for twenty days past.

The child lost her head, and burst into tears.  The King took compassion on her, and despatched the Comtesse de Merinville to go and act as her guide or mistress.  Supported by this guardian angel, Madame d’Aubigne gained heart; she went through her pausing, her interrupted courtesies, to the end, and came in fairly good countenance to the King’s chair, who smiled encouragement upon her.  While these things were taking place in the gallery, Madame de Maintenon, in despair, her eyes full of tears, had to make an effort not to weep.  With that wit of which she is so proud, she should have been the first to laugh at this piece of childishness, which was not particularly new.  The embarrassment, the torture in which I saw her, filled me with a strong desire to laugh.  It was noticed; it was held a crime; and his Majesty himself was kind enough to scold me for it.

“I felt the same embarrassment,” he said to us, “the first time Monsieur le Cardinal desired to put me forward.  It was a question of receiving an ambassador, and of making a short reply to his ceremonial address.  I knew my reply by heart; it was not more than eight or ten lines at the most.  I was repeating it every minute while at play, for five or six days.  When it was necessary to perform in person before this throng, my childish memory was confused.  All my part was forgotten in my fear, and I could only utter these words:  ’Your address, Monsieur Ambassadeur,—­Monsieur l’Ambassadeur, your address.’  My mother, the Queen, grew very red, and was as confused as I was.  But my godfather, the Cardinal, finished this reply for me, which he had composed himself, and was pleased to see me out of the difficulty.”

This anecdote, evidently related to console the Marquise, filled her with gratitude.  They spoke of nothing else at Versailles for two days; after which, Madame la Comtesse d’Aubigne became, in her turn, a woman of experience, who judged the new debutantes severely, perhaps, every time that the occasion arose.