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Updated: June 26, 2025
We gave ourselves up for lost, as an accident of some sort seemed bound to ensue, when suddenly my carriage reached the courtyard of an inn, where we obtained help. Baulked of their prey, the horsemen turned about and rode away. They had been noticed the day before, hanging about and asking for Madame de Montespan.
Mayenne, Lorraine, Guise, Nemours, Mercoeur, Montpensier, Joyeuse, Epernon, Brissac, D'Arlincourt, Balagny, Rochefort, Villeroy, Villars, Montespan, Leviston, Beauvillars, and countless others, figured in the great financier's terrible account-book, from Mayenne, set down at the cool amount of three and a half millions, to Beauvoir or Beauvillars at the more modest price of a hundred and sixty thousand livres.
There is a legend, you know, that the cabinet was made for Madame de Montespan." She was talking more freely now; evidently a great load had been lifted from her perhaps I did not guess how great! "Mr. Vantine suspected as much," I said. "He was a connoisseur of furniture, and there was something about this cabinet which told him it had belonged to the Montespan.
Françoise d'Aubigné was born in 1635, of good family, but born and brought up in hard surroundings. She was married to Scarron in 1651; nine years later he died. Later, she was placed, in charge of the king's illegitimate children. She supplanted Mme. de Montespan, to whom she owed her promotion, in the king's favour.
There was Olympe de Mancini, whose Italian eyes had first taught him that there is a power which can rule over a king; her sister, too, Marie de Mancini; his wife, with her dark little sun-browned face; Henrietta of England, whose death had first shown him the horrors which lie in life; La Valliere, Montespan, Fontanges. Some were dead; some were in convents.
While the Count lived he took great care of her, but he died in the Morea, and his pretended page did not long survive him; she displayed great piety in the hour of death. A friend of the Count's, and a nephew of Madame de Montespan, took care of the child, and after his death the King gave the little creature a pension. I believe she is still in the convent.
He would not, in fact, have been wicked if the Marechal d'Uxelles, La Chouin and Montespan, with whom he was in his youth, as well as the Duchess, had not spoiled him, and made him believe that malice was a proof of wit.
M. do Louvois on her arrival went to call upon Madame de Maintenon; she supped at Madame de Richelieu's, some kissing her hand, others her gown, and she making fun of them all, if she is not much changed; but they say that she is." The king's pleasure in conversing with the governess became more marked every day; Madame de Montespan frequently burst out into bitter complaints.
They were: "Should Madame de Maintenon have any message for his Majesty, he will be for the next few hours in the room of Madame de Montespan." This she addressed to her rival, and it was sent on the spot, together with the king's order, by the hands of the little black page. For nearly a week the king was constant to his new humour.
Still, he was so much annoyed that he seriously contemplated urging Madame de Montespan to retire to a convent. He even authorized the venerable Bossuet, then Bishop of Condom, to call upon Madame de Montespan, and suggest in his name that she should withdraw from the court and retire to the seclusion of the cloister.
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