handkerchief fall; three bishops at once flung themselves
upon it, and there was a struggle as to who should pick it up to give it
back to him.

I related to the King what I had seen. He said to me: "These prelates
honour my confessor, looking upon him as a second me." In fact, the sins
of the King could only throw his confessor into relief and add to his
merit.

CHAPTER XVI.

Mademoiselle de Fontanges.--The Pavilions of the Garden of Flora.--Rapid
Triumph of the Favourite.--Her Retreat to Val-de-grace.--Her Death.

Madame de Maintenon was already forty-four years old, and appeared to be
only thirty. This freshness, that she owed either to painstaking care or
to her happy and quite peculiar constitution, gave her that air of youth
which fascinated the eyes of the courtiers and those of the monarch
himself. I wished one day to annoy her by bringing the conversation on
this subject, which could not be diverting to her. I began by putting
the question generally, and I then named several of our superannuated
beauties who still fluttered in the smiling gardens of Flora without
having the youth of butterflies.

"There are butterflies of every age and colour in the gardens of Flora,"
said she, catching the ball on the rebound. "There are presumptuous
ones, whom the first breath of the zephyr despoils of their plumage and
discolours; others, more reserved and less frivolous, keep their glamour
and prestige for a much longer time. For the rest, the latter seem to me
to rejoice without being vain in their advantages. And at bottom, what
should any insect gain by being proud?"

"Very little," I answered her, "since being dressed as a butterfly does
not prevent one from being an insect, and the best sustained preservation
lasts at most till the day after to-morrow."

The King entered. I started speaking of a young person, extremely
beautiful, who had just appeared at Court, and would eclipse, in my
opinion, all who had shone there before her.

"What do you call her?" asked his Majesty. "To what family does she
belong?"

"She comes from the provinces," I continued, "just like silk, silver, and
gold. Her parents desire to place her among the maids of honour of the
Queen. Her name is Fontanges, and God has never made anything so
beautiful."

As I said these words I watched the face of the Marquise. She listened
to this portrayal with attention, but without appearing moved by it, such
is her power of suppressing h