," she sobbed, a little later to the "Judas,"
Richelieu, when, with friendly words, he urged her to humour the King
and go away at least for a time; "it will be my death, but I will be in
Paris to-night."

And while Madame de Mailly was carrying her crushed heart through the
darkness to her exile, the King and Richelieu, disguised in large
perukes and black coats, were stealing across the great courtyards to
the rooms of Madame de la Tournelle, where the King's long waiting was
to have its reward. And, the following day, the usurper was callously
writing to a friend, "Doubtless Meuse will have informed you of the
trouble I had in ousting Madame de Mailly; at last I obtained a mandate
to the effect that she was not to return until she was sent for."

"No portrait," says de Goncourt, referring to this letter, "is to be
compared with such a confession. It is the woman herself with the
cynicism of her hardness, her shameless and cold-blooded ingratitude....
It is as though she drives her sister out by the two shoulders with
those words which have the coarse energy of the lower orders."

Louis, at last happy in the achievement of his desire, was not long in
discovering that in the third of the Nesle sisters he had his hands more
full than with either of her predecessors. Madame de Mailly and the
Comtesse de Vintimille had been content to play the role of mistress,
and to receive the King's none too lavish largesse with gratitude.
Madame de la Tournelle was not so complaisant, so easily satisfied. She
intended--and she lost no time in making the King aware of her
intention--to have her position recognised by the world at large, to
reign as Montespan had reigned, to have the Treasury placed at her
disposal, and her children, if she had any, made legitimate. Her last
stipulation was that she should be made a Duchess before the end of the
year. And to all these proposals Louis gave a meek assent.

To show further her independence, she soon began to drive her lover to
distraction by her caprices and her temper: "She tantalised, at once
rebuffed and excited the King by the most adroit comedies and those
coquetries which are the strength of her sex, assuring him that she
would be delighted if he would transfer his affection to other ladies."
And while the favourite was thus revelling in the insolence of her
conquest, her supplanted sister was eating out her heart in Paris. "Her
despair was terrible; the trouble of her heart refu