sed consolation,
begged for solitude, found vent every moment in cries for Louis. Those
who were around her trembled for her reason, for her life.... Again and
again she made up her mind to start for the Court, to make a final
appeal to the King, but each time, when the carriage was ready, she
burst into tears and fell back upon her bed."

As for Louis, chilled by the coldness of his mistress, distracted by her
whims and rages, his heart often yearned for the woman he had so cruelly
discarded; and separation did more than all her tears and caresses could
have done, to awake again the love he fancied was dead.

When Madame de la Tournelle paid her first visit as _Maitresse en titre_
to Choisy, nothing would satisfy her but an escort of the noblest ladies
in France, including a Princess of the Blood. Her progress was that of a
Queen; and in return for this honour, wrung out of the King's weakness,
she repaid him with weeks of coldness and ill-humour. She refused to
play at _cavagnol_ with him; she barricaded herself in her room,
refusing to open to all her lover's knocking; and vented her vapours on
him with, or without, provocation, until, as she considered, she had
reduced him to a becoming submission. Then she used her power and her
coquetries to wheedle out of him one concession after another,
including a promise by the King to return unopened any letters Madame de
Mailly might send to him. Nor was she content until her sister was
finally disposed of by the grant of a small pension and a modest lodging
in the Luxembourg.

Before the year closed Madame de la Tournelle was installed in the most
luxurious apartments at Versailles, and Louis, now completely caught in
her toils, was the slave of her and his senses, flinging himself into
all the licence of passion, and reviving the nightly debauches from
which the dead Comtesse had weaned him. And while her lover was thus
steeped in sensuality, his mistress was, with infinite tact, pursuing
her ambition. Affecting an indifference to affairs of State, she was
gradually, and with seeming reluctance, worming herself into the
position of chief Counsellor, and while professing to despise money she
was draining the exchequer to feed her extravagance.

Never was King so hopelessly in the toils of a woman as Louis, the
well-beloved, in those of Madame de la Tournelle. He accepted as meekly
as a child all her coldness and caprices, her jealousies and her rages;
and was ideally h