that she could
afford to endow a convent--the mere building of which cost one million
eight hundred thousand livres. Her children were legitimatized, and
declared princes of the blood. Through her the royal favors flowed.
Ambassadors, ministers, and even prelates, paid their court to her. On
her the reproofs of Bossuet fell without effect. Secure in her
ascendency over the mind of Louis, she triumphed over his court, and
insulted the nation. But, at last, he grew weary of her, although she
remained at court eighteen years, and she was dismissed from
Versailles, on a pension of a sum equal to six hundred thousand
dollars a year. She lived twenty-two years after her exile from court,
and in great splendor, sometimes hoping to regain the ascendency she
had once enjoyed, and at others in those rigorous penances which her
church inflicts as the expiation for sin. To the last, however, she
was haughty and imperious, and kept up the vain etiquette of a court.
Her husband, whom she had abandoned, and to whom, after her disgrace,
she sought to be reconciled, never would hear her name mentioned; and
the king, whom, for nearly twenty years, she had enthralled, heard of
her death with indifference, as he was starting for a hunting
excursion. "Ah, indeed," said Louis XIV., "so the marchioness is dead!
I should have thought that she would have lasted longer. Are you
ready, M. de la Rochefoucauld? I have no doubt that, after this last
shower, the scent will lie well for the dogs. Let us be off at once."

[Sidenote: Madame de Maintenon.]

As the Marchioness de Montespan lost her power over the royal egotist,
Madame de Maintenon gained hers. She was the wife of the poet Scarron,
and was first known to the king as the governess of the children of
Montespan. She was an estimable woman on the whole, very intellectual,
very proper, very artful, and very ambitious. No person ever had so
great an influence over Louis XIV. as she; and hers was the ascendency
of a strong mind over a weak one. She endeavored to make peace at
court, and to dissuade the king from those vices to which he had so
long been addicted. And she partially reclaimed him, although, while
her counsels were still regarded, Louis was enslaved by Madame de
Fontanges--a luxurious beauty, whom he made a duchess, and on whom he
squandered the revenues of a province. But her reign was short. Mere
physical charms must soon yield to the superior power of intellect and
wit, and, af