w strengthen. In seeking to
remove you from the court, where your presence and pretensions have
long since been misplaced, I wished to spare you the evidence of an
_event_ calculated to irritate your already exasperated nature. But
stay you here, madame," he added, sarcastically, "stay you here, since
you love great catastrophes and are amused by them. Day after
to-morrow you will be more than ever a _supernumerary_ in the palace."

This heartless announcement, that Madame de Maintenon was to take the
place of Madame de Montespan in the affections of the king, and
probably as his wedded wife, pierced, as with a dagger's point, the
heart of the discarded favorite. She fell senseless to the floor. The
king, without the slightest exhibition of sympathy, looked on
impatiently, while her women, who were immediately summoned,
endeavored to restore consciousness. As the unhappy marchioness
revived, the first words which fell upon her ears were from the king,
as he said,

"All this wearies me beyond endurance. She must leave the palace this
very day."

In a frenzy of rage and despair, the marchioness seized a
dessert-knife which chanced to lay upon the table, and, springing from
the arms of her attendants, rushed upon her youngest child, the little
Count de Toulouse, whom the king held by the hand, and from whom she
was to be cruelly severed, and endeavored to plunge the knife into his
bosom, exclaiming,

"Yes, I will leave this palace, but first--"

At that moment, before the sentence was finished, the door opened, and
Madame de Maintenon, who had probably anticipated some tragic scene,
sprang upon the wretched woman, seizing the knife with one hand, and
with the other thrusting the child away. The maniacal marchioness was
seized by her attendants. The king tottered to the chimney-piece,
buried his face in his hands, and, from a complicity of emotions not
easily disentangled, wept convulsively.

Madame de Maintenon's hand was cut by the knife. As she was binding up
the bleeding wound with her handkerchief, the half-delirious
marchioness said to her, referring to the fact that the king had at
first been unwilling to receive her as the guardian of the children,

"Ah! madame, had I believed what the king told me fourteen years ago,
my life would not have been in your power to-day."

Madame de Maintenon, her eyes suffused with tears, looked sadly upon
her, then taking her hand, pressed it feelingly, and, without uttering