ver suspected that her glances had wandered to any
one else. They fell, however, upon Nangis, and soon redoubled. Nangis
was not ungrateful, but he feared the thunderbolt; and his heart, too,
was already engaged. Madame de la Vrilliere, who, without beauty, was
pretty and grateful as Love, had made this conquest. She was, as I have
said, daughter of Madame de Mailly, Dame d'Atours of Madame la Duchesse
de Bourgogne; and was always near her. Jealousy soon enlightened her as
to what was taking place. Far from yielding her conquest to the Duchess;
she made a point of preserving it, of disputing its possession, and
carrying it off. This struggle threw Nangis into a terrible
embarrassment. He feared the fury of Madame de la Vrilliere, who
affected to be more ready to break out than in reality she was. Besides
his love for her, he feared the result of an outburst, and already saw
his fortune lost. On the other hand, any reserve of his towards the
Duchess, who had so much power in her hands--and seemed destined to have
more--and who he knew was not likely to suffer a rival
--might, he felt, be his ruin. This perplexity, for those who were aware
of it, gave rise to continual scenes. I was then a constant visitor of
Madame de Blansac, at Paris, and of the Marechale de Rochefort, at
Versailles; and, through them and several other ladies of the Court, with
whom I was intimate, I learnt, day by day, everything that passed. In
addition to the fact that nothing diverted me more, the results of this
affair might be great; and it was my especial ambition to be well
informed of everything. At length, all members of the Court who were
assiduous and enlightened understood the state of affairs; but either
through fear or from love to the Duchess, the whole Court was silent, saw
everything, whispered discreetly, and actually kept the secret that was
not entrusted to it. The struggle between the two ladies, not without
bitterness, and sometimes insolence on the part of Madame de la
Vrilliere, nor without suffering and displeasure gently manifested on the
part of Madame de Bourgogne, was for a long time a singular sight.

Whether Nangis, too faithful to his first love, needed some grains of
jealousy to excite him, or whether things fell out naturally, it happened
that he found a rival. Maulevrier, son of a brother of Colbert who had
died of grief at not being named Marshal of France, was this rival. He
had married a daughter of the Marechal de