ins of
this cruel folly are a few ruins at Maintenon.

After the failure of this scheme, subterranean water-courses were
contrived. The _plaisir du roi_ must be sated at any cost, and at
length a magnificent garden was created, filled with a population of
statues and adorned with gigantic fountains. Soon however, the king
tired of the bustle and noise of Versailles, and a miserable and
swampy site at Marly, the haunt of toads and serpents and creeping
things, was transformed into a splendid hermitage. Hills were
levelled, great trees brought from Compiegne, most of which soon died
and were as quickly replaced; fish-ponds, adorned by exquisite
paintings, were made and unmade; woods were metamorphosed into lakes,
where the king and a select company of courtiers disported themselves
in gondolas and where cascades refreshed their ears in summer heat;
precious paintings, statues and costly furniture charmed the eye
inside the hermitage--and all to receive the king and his intimates
from Wednesday to Saturday on a few occasions in the year. St. Simon
with passionate exaggeration declares that Marly cost more than
Versailles.[142] Nothing remains to-day of all this splendour: it was
neglected by Louis' successors and sold in lots during the Revolution.

[Footnote 142: Taine, basing his calculation on a MS. bound with the
monogram of Mansard, estimated the cost of Versailles in modern
equivalent at about 750,000,000 francs (L30,000,000 sterling.)]

After a life of wanton licentiousness, Louis, at the age of forty, was
captivated by the mature charms of a widow of forty-three, a colonial
adventuress of noble descent, who after the death of her husband, the
crippled comic poet Scarron, became governess to the king's children
by Madame de Montespan. Soon after the death of Maria Theresa, the
widow Scarron, known to history as Madame de Maintenon, was secretly
married to her royal lover, who for the remainder of his life remained
her docile slave.

A narrow bigot in matters of religion and completely under the
influence of fanatics, Madame de Maintenon persuaded Louis that a
crusade against heresy would be a fitting atonement for his past sins.
By the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 22nd October 1685, the
charter of Protestant liberties was destroyed, and those who had given
five out of ten marshals to France, including the great Turenne, were
denied the right of civil existence. Whole cities were depopulated;
tens of thous