f my inmates; but
there was a little open space furnished with vines and fruit-walls, and
one of the largest courtyards in the whole of the Faubourg Saint Germain.

Having always loved society, I had multiplied in the two principal blocks
of the sleeping-rooms and the entrance-hall complete apartments for the
lady inmates. And a proof that I was neither detested by the world nor
unconsidered is that all these apartments were sought after and occupied
as soon as the windows were put in and the painting done. My own
apartment was simple, but of a majestic dignity. It communicated with
the chapel, where my tribune, closed with a handsome window, was in face
of the altar.

I decided, once for all, that the Superior should be my nomination whilst
God should leave me in this world, but that this right should not pass on
to my heirs. The bell of honour rang for twenty minutes every time I
paid a visit to these ladies; and I only had incense at high mass, and at
the Magnificat, in my quality of foundress.

I went from time to time to make retreats, or, to be more accurate,
vacations, in my House of Saint Joseph. M. Bossuet solicited the favour
of being allowed to preach there on the day of the solemn consecration. I
begged him to preserve himself for my funeral oration. He answered
cruelly that there was nothing he could refuse me.

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 Pri