so
doing, sealed her own fate.

Madame de Maintenon was a very wise woman. She did not entertain any
sincere affection for the King, and, during all the years of his
devotion to her, she never really loved him. She found a monarch much
sated with the luxurious pleasures of the Court, and beginning to tire
of his latest mistress, and she saw in the situation an opportunity
that appealed to her ambition. With shrewd judgment she measured the
character of Madame de Montespan, and she forecast in her mind the
inevitable downfall of the proud and arrogant favorite. She was the
very opposite in nature of Madame de Montespan. Her self-possession,
poise, skill and tact, virtue and piety made an irresistible appeal to
the tired King. That her piety was scarcely more than a cloak is
betrayed by many of her own utterances. "Nothing is more clever than
irreproachable behavior," she said at one time to close friends. Her
behavior was both irreproachable and clever, and it obtained for her
the satisfaction of her highest ambitions. She fascinated and lured
the King, playing the coquette to him, but evading him with a baffling
assumption of virtue, yielding just enough to draw the Monarch on; then
playing the part of a prude, until, finally, she became in the eyes of
the fascinated Louis the most desired of women. It was not long before
Madame de Maintenon was so advanced in the King's favor that the affair
was the gossip of the Court, and Madame de Montespan was compelled to
stand by, a silent and bitter witness of her own defeat. It was a
humiliating blow to Madame de Montespan to see the King with eyes only
for Madame de Maintenon, saying witty and agreeable things to her, and
ignoring his former favorite completely. It was not long before Madame
de Montespan received her dismissal and, trembling with rage, descended
the great staircase of Versailles never again to mount it. Madame de
Maintenon was installed in special apartments at the head of the Marble
Staircase, opposite the Hall of the King's Guards, and a new spirit
dominated the halls of the palace. Under Madame de Montespan a
"haughtiness in everything that reached to the clouds" had held the
Court and attendants in fear, made the lives of all uneasy, and kept
the atmosphere of the palace astir. With the entrance of Madame de
Maintenon into favor a quieter tone pervaded Versailles. Madame was a
woman of great intelligence and wit, and made all feel the graci