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In August, on the Day of Our Lady, while the King was besieging Lille, a letter came to the Queen, informing her that her husband had forsaken Madame de la Valliere for her Majesty's lady-in-waiting, the Marquise de Montespan. Moreover, the anonymous missive named "the prudent Duchesse de Montausier" as confidante and accomplice.
I laughed heartily, too, and such a treaty of peace seemed to contain queer compensation clauses: Madame de Montespan and Mexica were mutually bound over to support each other; the spectacle was vastly droll, I vow. Besides her little dwarf, the Queen had a fool named Tricominy.
M. de Montespan, at the time of the suit for judicial separation before the Chatelet, had caused his advocate to maintain this barbarous argument, that a son, though brought into the world by his mother, ought to side against her if domestic storms arise, and prefer to everybody and everything the man whose arms and name he bears.
Lauzun was conducted there as before, and never pardoned Maupertuis the severe pedantry of his exactitude. This last journey was made in the autumn of 1680. Lauzun consented to everything. Madame de Montespan returned triumphant.
Among her portraits are those of Isabel de Braganza, Washington, Mme. de Montespan, Mme. Dubarry, Queen Margaret of Austria, and Don Carlos, son of Philip II. Her other works include a "Magdalen in the Desert," "Laura and Petrarch," "Joseph with the Christ-Child," "Francis I. at the Battle of Pavia," and many good copies after celebrated painters.
That old Maintenon and Pere la Chaise had persuaded him that all the sins he had committed with Madame de Montespan would be pardoned if he persecuted and extirpated the professors of the reformed religion, and that this was the only path to heaven. The poor King believed it fervently, for he had never seen a Bible in his life; and immediately after this the persecution commenced.
The Marechale de Rochefort was in this way the friend of Mesdames de la Valliere, de Montespan, and de Soubise; and she became the friend of Madame de Maintenon, to whom she attached herself in proportion as she saw her favour increase.
"He and my parrot," she said, "amuse the Court to my shame." In the end, finding that neither by upbraiding the King nor by beating his wife could he prevail, Monsieur de Montespan resigned himself after his own fashion. He went into widower's mourning, dressed his servants in black, and came ostentatiously to Court in a mourning coach to take ceremonious leave of his friends.
De Montespan was not in the least ruffled at the tidings; she rather enjoyed the idea of setting off her own splendor against the shabbiness of her rival. But the court was in a state of anxious excitement on the subject. Everybody was dying of curiosity to see the meeting of the rivals, and the effect that was to be produced by their presence on the poor deserted queen.
Madame de Maintenon did not rise, but, with a slight flush upon her cheek, motioned to Madame de Montespan to take a seat upon a tabouret which stood near by. The king scarcely noticed her. Madame de Maintenon addressed her in a few words of condescension.
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