tly through her
scruples, it was through her vanity. I have had proof of this on various
occasions, and I have made no error.

The pretended amours of Mademoiselle d'Aubigne and the Marquis de
Villarceaux, Ninon's friend, are an invention of malicious envy. I
justified Madame Scarron on the matter before the King, when I asked her
for the education of the Princes; and having rendered her this justice,
from conviction rather than necessity, I shall certainly not charge her
with it to-day. Madame de Maintenon possesses a fund of philosophy which
she does not reveal nor confess to everybody. She fears God in the
manner of Socrates and Plato; and as I have seen her more than once make
game, with infinite wit, of the Abbe Gobelin, her confessor, who is a
pedant and avaricious, I am persuaded that she knows much more about it
than all these proud doctors in theology, and that she would be
thoroughly capable of confessing her confessor.

She had remained, then, the friend of Ninon, but at heart and in
recollection, without sending her news or seeing her again. Mademoiselle
de l'Enclos, rich, disinterested, and proud of her independent position,
learned with pleasure the triumph of her former friend, but without
writing to her or congratulating her. Ninon, by the consent of all those
who have come near her, is good-nature itself. One of her relations, or
friends, was a candidate for a vacant post as farmer-general, and
besought her to make some useful efforts for him.

"I have no one but Madame de Maintenon," she replied to this relation.
And the other said to her:

"Madame de Maintenon? It is as though you had the King himself!"

Mademoiselle de l'Enclos, trimming her pen with her trusty knife, wrote
to the lady in waiting an agreeable and polished letter, one of those
letters, careful without stiffness, that one writes, indulging oneself a
little with the intention of getting oneself read.

The letter of solicitation seemed so pretty to the lady in waiting that
she made the King peruse it.

"This is an excellent opportunity for me," said the prince at once, "to
see with my own eyes this extraordinary, person, of whom I have so long
heard talk. I saw her one day at the opera, but just when she was
getting into her carriage; and my incognito did not permit me to approach
her. She seemed to me small, but well made. Her carriage drove off like
a flash."

To meet this curiosity which the King displayed, it was