The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Volume
VI., by Madame La Marquise De Montespan

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Title: The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Volume VI.
Being the Historic Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV.

Author: Madame La Marquise De Montespan

Release Date: September 29, 2006 [EBook #3852]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARQUISE DE MONTESPAN ***

Produced by David Widger

MEMOIRS OF MADAME LA MARQUISE DE MONTESPAN

Written by Herself

Being the Historic Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV.

BOOK 6.

CHAPTER XIX.

The Court Travels in Picardy and Flanders.--The Boudoir Navy.--Madame de
Montespan Is Not Invited.--The King Relates to Her the Delights of the
Journey.--Reflections of the Marquise.

The King, consoled as he was for the death of the Duchesse de Fontanges,
did not, on that account, return to that sweet and agreeable intimacy
which had united us for the space of eleven or twelve years. He
approached me as one comes to see a person of one's acquaintance, and it
was more than obvious that his only bond with me was his children.

Being a man who loved pomp and show, he resolved upon a journey in
Flanders,--a journey destined to furnish him, as well as his Court, with
numerous and agreeable distractions, and to give fresh alarm to his
neighbours.

Those "Chambers of Reunion," as they were called, established at Metz and
at Brisach, competed with each other in despoiling roundly a host of
great proprietors, under the pretext that their possessions had formerly
belonged to Alsace, and that this Alsace had been ceded to us by the last
treaties. The Prince Palatine of the Rhine saw himself stripped, on this
occasion, of the greater part of the land which he had inherited from his
ancestors, and when he would present a memoir on this subject to the
ministers, M. de Croissy-Colbert answered politely that he was in despair
at being unable to decide the matter himself; but that the Chambers of
Metz and Brisach having been instituted to take cognisance of it, it was
before these solemn tribunals that he must proceed.

The Palatine lost, amon