g, often
interrupted us," she says; "my sister, Marie, alone was undisturbed; and
you can easily understand that his assiduity had charms for her, who was
the cause of it, because it had none for others."

And as Louis' visits to the Mancini lodging became more and more
frequent, each adding a fresh link to the chain that was binding him to
her young sister, Madame de Soissons saw less and less of him, until an
amused tolerance gave place to a genuine alarm. It was nothing less than
an outrage that she, who had so long held first place in the King's
favour, should be ousted by a "mere child," the last person in the world
whom she could have thought of as a rival. But the Comtesse was no woman
to be easily dethroned. Although at every Court ball, fete, or ballet,
Louis was now inseparable from her sister, she affected to ignore these
open slights and lost no opportunity in public of vaunting her intimacy
with His Majesty, even to the extent on one occasion, as Mademoiselle
records, of taking Louis' seat at a ball supper and compelling him to
share it with her.

But such shameless arrogance only served to estrange the King still
further, and to make him seek still more the company of the young
sister, who had already captured his heart as the Comtesse had never
captured it. When Louis made his memorable journey to Lyons to meet the
Princess Margaret of Savoy, it was to Marie that he paid the most
courtly and tender attentions. "During the journey," says Mademoiselle,
"he did not address a word to the Comtesse de Soissons"; and, indeed, on
more than one occasion he showed a marked aversion to her.

At St Jean d'Angely, Louis not only himself escorted Marie to her
lodging; he stayed with her until two o'clock in the morning. "Nothing,"
her sister Hortense records, "could equal the passion which the King
showed, and the tenderness with which he asked of Marie her pardon for
all she had suffered for his sake." It was, indeed, no secret at Court
that he had offered her marriage, and had taken a solemn vow that
neither Margaret of Savoy nor the Infanta of Spain should be his wife.
But, as we have seen in a previous chapter, both the Queen and Mazarin
were determined that the Infanta should be Queen of France; and that his
foolish romance with the Mancini girl should be nipped in the bud.

There was also another powerful influence at work to thwart his passion
for Marie. The indifference of the Comtesse de Soissons had given