could paint forty years hence
as well as to-day, so strongly did it strike me--was that which from
the summit of this rampart the King gave to all his army, and to the
innumerable crowd of spectators of all kinds in the plain below.
Madame de Maintenon faced the plain and the troops in her sedan-chair,
alone, between its three windows drawn up; her porters having retired
to a distance. On the left pole in front sat Madame la Duchesse de
Bourgogne; and on the same side, in a semicircle, standing, were
Madame la Duchesse, Madame la Princesse de Conti, and all the
ladies--and behind them again, many men. At the right window was the
King, standing, and a little in the rear a semicircle of the most
distinguished men of the court. The King was nearly always uncovered;
and every now and then stooped to speak to Madame de Maintenon, and
explain to her what she saw, and the reason of each movement.

[Footnote 36: At the period of which Saint-Simon here writes, Madame
de Maintenon had acquired that ascendency over Louis XIV which
resulted in her marriage to him. She had been born in a prison, and
was three years the senior of the King. Her first husband was the poet
Scarron, at whose death, after a marriage of nine years, she had found
herself in poverty. She secured a pension from Anne of Austria, the
mother of the King, but at the queen-mother's death the pension was
discontinued. She was placed in charge of the King's natural son, to
whom she became much devoted, and was advanced through the King's
favor to various positions at court, receiving in 1678 the title of
marquise. Five years later the queen of Louis XIV died, and Louis
married Madame de Maintenon, whose influence over him in matters of
church and state became thereafter very great. She was a patroness of
art and literature, intensely orthodox in religion, and has been held
largely responsible for the King's revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
which occurred during the year of their marriage, tho she opposed the
violent persecutions which followed.]

Each time that he did so she was obliging enough to open the window
four or five inches, but never half-way; for I noticed particularly,
and I admit that I was more attentive to this spectacle than to that
of the troops. Sometimes she opened of her own accord to ask some
question of him: but generally it was he who, without waiting for her,
stooped down to instruct her of what was passing; and sometimes, if
she did not