home, to
live in concubinage with her in the presence of his wife whose patience
and virtue he respected.

The satiety of the honeymoon, usually so fatal, and especially the
honeymoon of such marriages, only consolidated the favour of Madame de
Maintenon. Soon after, she astonished everybody by the apartments given
to her at Versailles, at the top of the grand staircase facing those of
the King and on the same floor. From that moment the King always passed
some hours with her every day of his life; wherever she might be she was
always lodged near him, and on the same floor if possible.

What manner of person she was,--this incredible enchantress,--and how she
governed all-powerfully for more than thirty years, it behoves me now to
explain!

CHAPTER LXXVI

Madame de Maintenon was a woman of much wit, which the good company, in
which she had at first been merely suffered, but in which she soon shone,
had much polished; and ornamented with knowledge of the world, and which
gallantry had rendered of the most agreeable kind. The various positions
she had held had rendered her flattering, insinuating, complaisant,
always seeking to please. The need she had of intrigues, those she had
seen of all kinds, and been mixed up in for herself and for others, had
given her the taste, the ability, and the habit of them. Incomparable
grace, an easy manner, and yet measured and respectful, which, in
consequence of her long obscurity, had become natural to her,
marvellously aided her talents; with language gentle, exact, well
expressed, and naturally eloquent and brief. Her best time, for she was
three or four years older than the King, had been the dainty phrase
period;--the superfine gallantry days,--in a word, the time of the
"ruelles," as it was called; and it had so influenced her that she always
retained evidences of it. She put on afterwards an air of importance,
but this gradually gave place to one of devoutness that she wore
admirably. She was not absolutely false by disposition, but necessity
had made her so, and her natural flightiness made her appear twice as
false as she was.

The distress and poverty in which she had so long lived had narrowed her
mind, and abased her heart and her sentiments. Her feelings and her
thoughts were so circumscribed, that she was in truth always less even
than Madame Scarron, and in everything and everywhere she found herself
such. Nothing was more repelling than this meann