whose influence not a
little of Louis's glory may be ascribed, since the most splendid years
of his reign were those between 1668 and 1678 when she was maitresse en
titre and more than Queen of France. The women played a great part at
the Court of Louis XIV, and those upon whom he turned his dark eyes were
in the main as wax under the solar rays of the Sun-King. But Madame de
Montespan had discovered the secret of reversing matters, so that in her
hands it was the King who became as wax for her modelling. It is with
this secret--a page of the secret history of France that we are here
concerned.

Francoises Athenais de Tonnay-Charente had come to Court in 1660 as
a maid of honour to the Queen. Of a wit and grace to match her superb
beauty, she was also of a perfervid piety, a daily communicant, a model
of virtue to all maids of honour. This until the Devil tempted her. When
that happened, she did not merely eat an apple; she devoured an entire
orchard. Pride and ambition brought about her downfall. She shared the
universal jealousy of which Louise de la Valliere was a victim,
and coveted the honours and the splendour by which that unfortunate
favourite was surrounded.

Not even her marriage with the Marquis de Montespan some three years
after her coming to Court sufficed to overcome the longings born of
her covetousness and ambition. And then, when the Sun-King looked with
favour upon her opulent charms, when at last she saw the object of her
ambition within reach, that husband of hers went very near to wrecking
everything by his unreasonable behaviour. This preposterous marquis had
the effrontery to dispute his wife with Jupiter, was so purblind as not
to appreciate the honour the Sun-King proposed to do him.

In putting it thus, I but make myself the mouthpiece of the Court.

When Montespan began to make trouble by railing furiously against the
friendship of the King for his wife, his behaviour so amazed the King's
cousin, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, that she called him "an extravagant
and extraordinary man." To his face she told him that he must be mad to
behave in this fashion; and so incredibly distorted were his views, that
he did not at all agree with her. He provoked scenes with the King, in
which he quoted Scripture, made opposite allusions to King David which
were in the very worst taste, and even ventured to suggest that the
Sun-King might have to reckon with the judgment of God. If he escaped
a lettre de