ng her to return
to him with their infant child.

"Come," he wrote in one of his letters, "and take a near view, my dear
Athenais, of these stupendous Pyrenees, whose every ravine is a
landscape, and every valley an Eden. To all these beauties yours alone
is wanting. You will be here like Diana, the divinity of these noble
forests."

The excuses which the marchioness offered did by no means satisfy her
husband. His heart was wounded and his suspicions aroused. At last he
was apprised of her manifest endeavors to attract the attention of the
king. He wrote severely; informed her of the extent of his knowledge.
He threatened to expose her conduct to her own family, and to shut her
up in a convent. At the same time, he commanded her to send to him, by
the messenger who bore his letter, their little son, that he might not
be contaminated by association with so unworthy a mother.

It was too late. The marchioness was involved in such guilty relations
with the king that she could not easily be extricated. Still she was
much alarmed by the angry letter of her husband. The king perceived
her anxiety, and inquired the cause. She placed the letter in his
hands. He read it, changing color as he read. He then coolly remarked,

"Our position is a difficult one. It requires much precaution. I will,
however, take care that no violence shall be offered you. You had
better, however, send him your son. The child is useless here, and
perhaps inconvenient. The marquis, deprived of the child, may be
driven to acts of severity."

A mother's love was strong in the bosom of the marchioness. She wept
aloud, and declared that she would sooner die than part with her son.
Her husband soon after came to Paris. He addressed the king in a very
firm and reproachful letter, and for three months made earnest
applications to the pope for a divorce. But the pope, afraid of
offending Louis XIV., turned a deaf ear to his supplications. It was
in vain for a noble, however exalted his rank, to contend against the
king.

The injured marquis, finding all his efforts vain, returned wifeless
and childless to his chateau. Announcing that to him his wife was
dead, he assumed the deepest mourning, draped his house and the
liveries of his servants in crape, and ordered a funeral service to
take place in the parish church. A numerous concourse attended, and
all the sad ceremonies of burial were solemnized.

The king was greatly annoyed. The scandal, which spr