Voisin in the Rue de la Tannerie, well known as a fortuneteller to many
ladies of the Court, who at a word from me will do your need."

La Montespan turned white. The piety in which she had been reared--the
habits of which clung to her despite the irregularity of her life-made
her recoil before the thing that she desired. Sorcery was of the Devil.
She told him so. But Vanens laughed.

"So that it be effective. . ." said he with a shrug.

And then across the room floated a woman's trilling laugh. She looked
in the direction of the sound and beheld the gorgeous figure of the King
bending--yet haughty and condescending even in adoration--over handsome
Madame de Ludres. Pride and ambition rose up in sudden fury to trample
on religious feeling. Let Vanens take her to this witch of his, for be
the aid what it might, she must have it.

And so, one dark night late in the year, Louis de Vanens handed a masked
and muffled lady from a coach at the corner of the Rue de la Tannerie,
and conducted her to the house of La Voisin.

The door was opened for them by a young woman of some twenty years
of age--Marguerite Monvoisin, the daughter of the witch--who led them
upstairs to a room that was handsomely furnished and hung with fantastic
tapestry of red designs upon a black ground--designs that took monstrous
shapes in the flickering light of a cluster of candles. Black curtains
parted, and from between them stepped a short, plump woman, of a certain
comeliness, with two round black beads of eyes. She was fantastically
robed in a cloak of crimson velvet, lined with costly furs and closely
studded with double-headed eagles in fine gold, which must have been
worth a prince's ransom; and she wore red shoes on each of which there
was the same eagle design in gold.

"Ah, Vanens!" she said familiarly.

He bowed.

"I bring you," he announced, "a lady who has need of your skill."

And he waved a hand towards the tall cloaked figure at his side.

La Voisin looked at the masked face.

"Velvet faces tell me little, Madame la Marquise," she said calmly.
"Nor, believe me, will the King look at a countenance that you conceal
from me."

There was an exclamation of surprise and anger from Madame de Montespan.
She plucked off her mask.

"You knew me?"

"Can you wonder?" asked La Voisin, "since I have told you what you carry
concealed in your heart?"

Madame de Montespan was as credulous as only the very devout can be.

"Since that i