who do not look upon a woman as a
friend, a companion, a frank, free associate, but as a piece of property
or of furniture, useful to his house, and which he has procured for that
purpose only.

I am told that in England a man is the absolute proprietor of his wife,
and that if he took her to the public market with a cord round her neck
and exhibited her for sale, such sale is perfectly valid in the eyes of
the law. Laws such as these inspire horror. Yet they should hardly
surprise one among a semibarbarous nation, which does nothing like other
peoples, and which deems itself authorised to place the censer in the
hands of its monarch, and its monarch in the hands of the headsman.

M. de Montespan came to Paris and instituted proceedings against me
before the Chatelet authorities. To the King he sent a letter full of
provocations and insults. To the Pope he sent a formal complaint,
accompanied by a most carefully prepared list of opinions which no lawyer
was willing to sign. For three whole months he tormented the Pope, in
order to induce him to annul our marriage. Of a truth, our Sovereign
Pontiff could have done nothing better, but in Rome justice and religion
always rank second to politics. The cardinals feared to offend a great
prince, and so they suffered me to remain the wife of my husband. When
he saw that on every side his voice was lost in the desert, and that the
King, being calmer and more prudent than he, did not deign to pick up the
glove, his folly reached its utmost limit. He went into the deepest
mourning ever seen. He draped his horses and carriages with black. He
gave orders for a funeral service to be held in his parish, which the
whole town and its suburbs were invited to attend. He declared, verbally
and in writing, that he no longer possessed a wife; that Madame de
Montespan had died of an attack of coquetry and ambition; and he talked
of marrying again when the year of mourning and of widowhood should be
over.

His first outbursts of wrath were the source of much amusement to the
King, who naturally was on the side of decorum and averse to hostile
opinion. Pranks such as these seemed to him more a matter for mirth than
fear, and, on hearing the story of the catafalque, he laughingly said to
me, "Now that he has buried you, it is to be hoped that he will let you
repose in peace." But hearing each day of fresh absurdities, his Majesty
grew at last impatient. Luckily, M. de Montespan,