ction in which an historian, who knows everything,
sees into the future, or rather, the past. Madame was neither a
prophetess nor a sibyl; nor could she, any more than another, read what
was written in that terrible and fatal book of the future, which records
in its most secret pages the most serious events. No, Madame desired
simply to punish the king for having availed himself of secret means
altogether feminine in their nature; she wished to prove to him that if
he made use of offensive weapons of that nature, she, a woman of ready
wit and high descent, would assuredly discover in the arsenal of her
imagination defensive weapons proof even against the thrusts of a
monarch. Moreover, she wished him to learn that, in a war of that
description, kings are held of no account, or, at all events, that kings
who fight on their own behalf, like ordinary individuals, may witness
the fall of their crown in the first encounter; and that, in fact, if he
had expected to be adored by all the ladies of the court from the
very first, from a confident reliance on his mere appearance, it was a
pretension which was most preposterous and insulting even, for certain
persons who filled a higher position than others, and that a lesson
taught in season to this royal personage, who assumed too high and
haughty a carriage, would be rendering him a great service. Such,
indeed, were Madame's reflections with respect to the king. The sequel
itself was not thought of. And in this manner, it will be seen that she
had exercised all her influence over the minds of her maids of honor,
and with all its accompanying details, had arranged the comedy which had
just been acted. The king was completely bewildered by it; for the first
time since he had escaped from the trammels of M. de Mazarin, he found
himself treated as a man. Similar severity from any of his subjects
would have been at once resisted by him. Strength comes with battle.
But to match one's self with women, to be attacked by them, to have been
imposed upon by mere girls from the country, who had come from Blois
expressly for that purpose; it was the depth of dishonor for a young
sovereign full of the pride his personal advantages and royal power
inspired him with. There was nothing he could do--neither reproaches,
nor exile--nor could he even show the annoyance he felt. To manifest
vexation would have been to admit that he had been touched, like
Hamlet, by a sword from which the button had bee