nother means was chosen to stimulate the king's interest in the
matter.

Louis was in the habit of spending the afternoon in Madame de
Maintenon's salons, and also despatching state business therewith his
ministers until a late hour at night. Here a poem was presented to him
in the name of the jeopardised lovers, complaining that, whenever
gallantry bid them honour their mistress with a present, they had
always to risk their lives on the fulfilment of the injunction. There
was always both honour and pleasure to be won in shedding their blood
for their lady in a knightly encounter; but it was quite another thing
when they had to deal with a stealthy malignant assassin, against whom
they could not arm themselves. Would Louis, the bright polar star of
all love and gallantry, cause the resplendent beams of his glory to
shine and dissipate this dark night, and so unveil the black mystery
that was concealed within it? The god-like hero, who had broken his
enemies to pieces, would now (they hoped) draw his sword glittering
with victory, and, as Hercules did against the Lernean serpent, or
Theseus the Minotaur, would fight against the threatening monster which
was gnawing away all the raptures of love, and darkening all their joy
and converting it into deep pain and grief inconsolable.

Serious as the matter was, yet the poem did not lack clever and witty
turns, especially in the description of the anxieties which the lovers
had to endure as they stole by secret ways to their mistresses, and of
how their apprehensions proved fatal to all the rapturous delights of
love and to every dainty gallant adventure before it could even develop
into blossom. If it be added that the poem was made to conclude with a
magniloquent panegyric upon Louis XIV., the king could not fail to read
it with visible signs of satisfaction. Having reached the end of it, he
turned round abruptly to Madame de Maintenon, without lifting his eyes
from the paper, and read the poem through again aloud; after which he
asked her with a gracious smile what was her opinion with respect to
the wishes of the jeopardised lovers.

De Maintenon, faithful to the serious bent of her mind, and always
preserving a certain colour of piety, replied that those who walked
along secret and forbidden paths were not worthy of any special
protection, but that the abominable criminals did call for special
measures to be taken for their destruction. The king, dissatisfied with
this