I wondered at the king's patience, and at the
rage of that vain creature. It all ended with these terrible words: 'I
have told you already, madame; I will not be interfered with.'"

Henceforth Madame de Montespan "interfered with" the king. He gave the
new dauphiness Madame de Maintenon as her mistress of the robes. "I am
told," writes Madame de Sevigne, "that the king's conversations do
nothing but increase and improve, that they last from six to ten o'clock,
that the daughter-in-law goes occasionally to pay them a shortish visit,
that they are found each in a big chair, and that, when the visit is
over, the talk is resumed. The lady is no longer accosted without awe
and respect, and the ministers pay her the court which the rest do. No
friend was ever so careful and attentive as the king is to her; she makes
him acquainted with a perfectly new line of country--I mean the
intercourse of friendship and conversation, without chicanery and without
constraint; he appears to be charmed with it."

Discreet and adroit as she was, and artificial without being false,
Madame de Maintenon gloried in bringing back the king and the court to
the ways of goodness. "There is nothing so able as irreproachable
conduct," she used to say. The king often went to see the queen; the
latter heaped attentions upon Madame de Maintenon. "The king never
treated me more affectionately than he has since she had his ear," the
poor princess would say. The dauphiness had just had a son. The joy at
court was excessive. "The king let anybody who pleased embrace him,"
says the Abbe de Croisy; "he gave everybody his hand to kiss. Spinola,
in the warmth of his zeal, bit his finger; the king began to exclaim.
'Sir,' interrupted the other, 'I ask your Majesty's pardon; but, if I
hadn't bitten you, you would not have noticed me.' The lower orders
seemed beside themselves, they made bonfires of everything. The porters
and the Swiss burned the poles of the chairs, and even the floorings and
wainscots intended for the great gallery. Bontemps, in wrath, ran and
told the king, who burst out laughing and said, 'Let them be; we will
have other floorings.'"

The least clear-sighted were beginning to discern the modest beams of a
rising sun. Madame de Montespan, who had a taste for intellectual
things, had not long since recommended Racine and Boileau to the king to
write a history of his reign. They had been appointed historiographers.
"When they h