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Updated: June 12, 2025
My poor old friend, the Duchesse de la Valière, past ninety and stone-deaf, has a guard set upon her, but in her own house; her daughter, the Duchesse de Chatillon, mother of the Duchesse de la Tremouille, is arrested; and thus the last, with her attachment to the Queen, must be miserable indeed! but one would think I feel for nothing but Duchesses: the crisis has crowded them together into my letter, and into a prison; and to be a prisoner among cannibals is pitiable indeed!
He is, however, greatly to be pitied, said the baron de la Valiere, that the wars he is engaged in, and which, in all probability will be of long continuance, hinders him from the possession of the most amiable princess in the world, and I dare answer, at least if I may credit those about her, she wishes he were of a less martial disposition.
"Ah!" said Madame Dépine, impressed beyond masking-point, "I suppose when one has had the habit of Courts " Madame Valière shuddered unexpectedly. "Let us not speak of it. Take a fig." But Madame Dépine persisted though she took the fig. "Ah! those were brave days when we had still an Emperor and an Empress to drive to the Bois with their equipages and outriders. Ah, how pretty it was!"
By these couriers he received letters from the baron de la Valiere, and several others of his friends, but none from the father of Charlotta; nor did any of them make any mention of that lady, tho' he knew the passion he had for her was now no secret to any of them.
It was at different times the residence of Louis XIII. of Anne of Austria, Christiana of Sweden, and of Madame La Valière, when Madame de Montespan rivalled her in the affections of Louis XIV. After the former had retired to the Convent of the Carmelites at Paris, it was assigned in 1689 to the unfortunate James the Second, whose bigotry had driven him from the throne of England.
Its possession, indeed, enabled Madame Valière to loiter on the more lighted stairs, or dawdle in the hall with Madame la Propriétaire; but Madame Dépine was not only debarred from these dignified domestic attitudes, but found a new awkwardness in bearing Madame Valière company in their walks abroad.
This way of living, and the company he was now associated with, gave Horatio a manly way of thinking much sooner than otherwise perhaps he might have had, yet did not rob him of his vivacity: some of the queen's women, and the young ladies about the princess, particularly mademoiselle Charlotta, had a thousand sprightly entertainments among themselves, into which he, the baron de la Valiere, and some others who had attachments at that court, were always admitted.
"Ah! here is my floor," panted Madame Valière at length, with an air of indicating it to a thorough stranger. "Will you not come into my room and eat a fig? They are very healthy between meals." Madame Dépine accepted the invitation, and entering her own corner of the corridor with a responsive air of foreign exploration, passed behind the door through whose keyhole she had so often peered.
"I see the costume of this, the beautiful Mademoiselle de la Valiere, upon a form that surpasses her own; I raise my eyes, and I behold a mask, and yet I recognize the lady; beauty is like that precious stone in the 'Arabian Nights, which emits, no matter how concealed, a light that betrays it." "I know the story," said the young lady. "The light betrayed it, not in the sun but in darkness.
I left her full of hope, and resolved to follow her advice and hers only in the troublesome affair in which I was involved. The Bishop of Montrouge whom she was going to address on an important matter, the nature of which was well known to me, was the Abbe de Voisenon, who was thus named because he often went there. Montrouge is an estate near Paris, belonging to the Duc de la Valiere.
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