seemed to believe themselves too inferior
to their husbands to dare to offer any political counsel. While none
of them were superior intellectually, they possessed dignity, good
sense, and tact, "a reverential feeling for the sanctity of religion
and the majesty of the throne," an admirable resignation, a painful
docility and submission--qualities which might have been turned to
the advantage of their owners and the state, had the former been more
self-assertive.

The infidelities of their husbands caused the queen-consorts constant
torture; they were forced to behold the kings' favorites becoming part
of their own households and were compelled to endure the presence,
as ladies in waiting, of those who, as their rivals, caused them to
suffer all possible torments of jealousy and outraged conjugal love.

First among the mistresses of Louis XIV. was Mlle. de La Valliere,
whom Sainte-Beuve mentions as the personification of the ideal of
a lover, combining disinterestedness, fidelity, unique and delicate
tenderness with a touching and sincere kindness. When, at the age of
seventeen, she was presented at court, the king immediately selected
her as one of his victims. Her beauty was so striking, of such an
exquisitely tender type, that no woman actually rivalled her as
queen of beauty. Distinguished by blond hair, dark blue eyes, a most
sympathetic voice, and a complexion of rare whiteness mingled
with red, she was guileless, animated, gentle, modest, graceful,
unaffected, and ingenuous; although slightly lame, she was, by
everyone, considered charming.

Mlle. de La Valliere was the mother of several children of whom Louis
XIV. was the father. On realizing that she had rivals in the favor
of the sovereign, she fled several times from the Tuileries to the
convent; on her second return, the king, about to go to battle,
recognized his daughter by her, whom he made a duchess. Remorse
overcame the mistress so deeply that she, for the third and final
time, left court. Especially on the rise to power of Mme. de Montespan
was she painfully humiliated, suffering the most intense pangs of
conscience. The evening before her final departure to the convent, she
dined with Mme. de Montespan, to drink "the cup to the dregs and
to enjoy the rejection of the world even to the last remains of its
bitterness."

Guizot describes this period most vividly: "When Mme. de Montespan
began to supplant her in the king's favor, the grief of Mlle. d