e, lacked neither charm nor grace. He even assumed,
when he wished, an excellent manner; but this cavalier, his own master
from his childhood, knew no other law but his own pleasures and desires.
He had made people talk about him in his earliest youth; he awoke the
same buzz of scandal now that he was fifty. Madame de Maintenon, hoping
to reform him, and wishing to constrain him to beget them an heir, made
him consent to the bonds of marriage. She had just discovered a very
pretty heiress of very good family, when he married secretly the daughter
of a mere 'procureur du roi'. The lady in waiting, being unable to undo
what had been done, submitted to this unequal alliance; and as her
sister-in-law, ennobled by her husband, was none the less a countess,
she, too, was presented.

The young person, aged fifteen at the most, was naturally very bashful.
When she found herself in this vast hall, between a double row of persons
of importance, whose fixed gaze never left her, she forgot all the bows,
all the elaborate courtesies,--in fine, all the difficult procedure of a
formal presentation, that her sister-in-law and dancing-masters had been
making her rehearse for twenty days past.

The child lost her head, and burst into tears. The King took compassion
on her, and despatched the Comtesse de Merinville to go and act as her
guide or mistress. Supported by this guardian angel, Madame d'Aubigne
gained heart; she went through her pausing, her interrupted courtesies,
to the end, and came in fairly good countenance to the King's chair, who
smiled encouragement upon her. While these things were taking place in
the gallery, Madame de Maintenon, in despair, her eyes full of tears, had
to make an effort not to weep. With that wit of which she is so proud,
she should have been the first to laugh at this piece of childishness,
which was not particularly new. The embarrassment, the torture in which
I saw her, filled me with a strong desire to laugh. It was noticed; it
was held a crime; and his Majesty himself was kind enough to scold me for
it.

"I felt the same embarrassment," he said to us, "the first time Monsieur
le Cardinal desired to put me forward. It was a question of receiving an
ambassador, and of making a short reply to his ceremonial address. I
knew my reply by heart; it was not more than eight or ten lines at the
most. I was repeating it every minute while at play, for five or six
days. When it was necessary t