“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.

“I believed myself to be loved by your family,” cried the King.  “What must I do, then, to be loved?  And, great God! with what a set I am surrounded!”

All these things transpired.  Soon we saw the father of the audacious De Liancourt arrive like a man bereft of his wits.  He ran to precipitate himself at the feet of the King.

“M. de La Rochefoucauld,” said the prince to him, “I was ignorant, until this day, that I was lacking in what is called martial prowess; but I shall at least have, on this occasion, the courage to despise the slanderous slights of these presumptuous youths.  Do not talk to me of the submissions and regrets of your two sons, who are unworthy of you; let them live as far away from me as possible; they do not deserve to approach an honest man, such as their King.”

The Prince de Turenne,

[The Prince de Turenne was in bad odour at Court ever since he had separated Monseigneur from his young wife by exaggerating that Princess’s small failings.—­Madame de Montespan’s note.]

son of the Duc de Bouillon, and Prince Eugene of Savoy, third or fourth son of the Comtesse de Soissons (Olympe Mancini), had accompanied their cousins De Conti on this knightly expedition; all these gentlemen returned at the conclusion of the war, except Prince Eugene, a violent enemy of the King.

This young Prince of the second branch, seeing his mother’s disgrace since the great affair of the poison, hated me mortally.  He carried his treachery so far as to attribute to me the misfortunes of Olympe, saying, and publishing all over Paris, that I had incited accusers in order to be able to deprive her forcibly of her superintendence.  This post, which had been sold to me for four hundred thousand francs, had been paid for long since; that did not prevent Eugene from everywhere affirming the contrary.