er natural feeling. The King only added
these words:

"This young person needs be quite extraordinary, since Madame de
Montespan praises her, and praises her with so much vivacity. However,
we shall see."

Two days afterwards, Mademoiselle de Fontanges was seen in the salon of
the grand table. The King, in spite of his composure, had looks and
attentions for no one else.

This excessive preoccupation struck the Queen, who, marking the
blandishments of the young coquette and the King's response, guessed the
whole future of this encounter; and in her heart was almost glad at it,
seeing that my turn had come.

Mademoiselle de Fontanges, given to the King by her shameless family,
feigned love and passion for the monarch, as though he had returned by
enchantment to his twentieth year.

As for him, he too appeared to us to forget all dates. I know that he
was only now forty-one years old, and having been the finest man in the
world, he could not but preserve agreeable vestiges of a once striking
beauty. But his young conquest had hardly entered on her eighteenth
year, and this difference could not fail to be plain to the most
inattentive, or most indulgent eyes.

The King, with a sort of anticipatory resignation, had for six or seven
years greatly simplified his appearance. We had seen him, little by
little, reform that Spanish and chivalric costume with which he once
embellished his first loves. The flowing plumes no longer floated over
his forehead, which had become pensive and quite serious. The diagonal,
scarf was suppressed, and the long boots, with gold and silver
embroidery, were no longer seen. To please his new divinity, the monarch
suddenly enough rejuvenated his attire. The most elegant stuffs became
the substance of his garments; feathers reappeared. He joined to them
emeralds and diamonds.

Allegorical comedies, concerts on the waters recommenced. Triumphant
horse-races set the whole Court abob and in movement. There was a fresh
carousal; there was all that resembles the enthusiasms of youthful
affection, and the deliriums of youth. The youth alone was not there, at
least in proportion, assortment, and similarity.

All that I was soliciting for twelve years, Mademoiselle de Fontanges had
only to desire for a week. She was created duchess at her debut; and the
lozenge of her escutcheon was of a sudden adorned with a ducal coronet,
and a peer's mantle.

I did not deign to pay attention to this outrage;