n her milk. I do not know whether or not this
is true, but what I do know well is that two of the Fontanges's
people died, saying publicly that they had been poisoned." With the
increasing influence of Mme. de Maintenon, the king completely forgot
his former mistress.

Mme. de Montespan was possibly the most arrogant and despotic of all
French mistresses and she was, also, the most humiliated. She had
inspired no confidence, friendship, love, or respect in Louis XIV.,
who eventually looked with shame and remorse upon his relations with
her. It took her sixteen years to overcome her terrible passion and to
give up the court forever. Not until 1691 did she become reconciled
to departure from Versailles; thenceforth, penitence conquered immoral
desires. M. Saint-Amand says she not only "arrived at remorse, but
at macerations, fasts, and haircloths. She limited herself to the
coarsest underlinen and wore a belt and garters studded with iron
points. She came at last to give all she had to the poor;" she also
founded a hospital in which she nursed the sick.

While at the convent, she tried, in vain, to effect a reconciliation
with her husband; not until every avenue to a social life was cut
off from her, did she entirely surrender herself to charity and the
service of God. In her latest years, she was so tormented by the
horrors of death that she employed several women whose only occupation
was to watch with her at night. She died in 1707, forgotten by the
king and all her former associates; Louis XIV. formally prohibited
her children, the Duke of Maine, the Comte de Toulouse, the Comte
de Vexin, and Mlles. de Nantes, de Blois, and de Tours, from wearing
mourning for her.

A striking contrast to Mme. de Montespan in character, disposition,
morality, and birth was Mme. de Maintenon, one of the greatest and
most important women in French history. What is known of her is so
enveloped in calumny and falsehood and made so uncertain by dispute,
that to disentangle the actual facts is almost an impossibility,
despite the glowing tribute paid to her in the immense work published
recently by the Comte d'Haussonville and M. Gabriel Hanotaux.

It would seem that the more the history of Mme. de Maintenon is
studied, the more one is led away from a first impression--which
usually proves to be an erroneous one. Thus, M. Lavallee, in his
first work, _Histoire des Francais_, wrote that she "was of the most
complete aridity of heart, nar