第40章 CHAPTER XXX.

Once a Queen, Always a Queen.--An Anonymous Letter.--The Queen's Confidence.--She Has a Sermon Preached against Madame de Montespan.--Who the Preacher was.--One Scandal May Avert Another.

I related how, near La Fere, at the time of the Flanders campaign, Madame de la Valliere's coach, at the risk of offending the Queen, left the main road and took a short cut across country, so as to get on ahead, and arrive before anybody else. By this the Duchess thought to give her royal friend a great mark of her attachment. On the contrary, it was the first cause for that coolness which the King afterwards displayed.

"Fain would he be beloved, yet loved with tact."The very next day his Majesty, prevailed upon La Valliere to say that such a style of travelling was too fatiguing for her. She had the honour of dining with the Queen, and then she returned to the little chateau of Versailles, so as to be near her children.

The King arranged with Madame de Montausier, lady-in-waiting to the Queen, that I should use her rooms to dress and write in, and that his Majesty should be free to come there when he liked, and have a quiet chat with me about matters of interest.

The Queen, whom I had managed to please by my amusing talk, always kept me close to her side, both when taking long walks or playing cards.

At a given signal, a knock overhead, I used to leave the Queen, excusing myself on the score of a headache, or arrears of correspondence; in short, I managed to get away as best I could.

The King left us in order to capture Douai, then Tournay, and finally the whole of Flanders; while the Queen continued to show me every sign of her sincere and trustful friendship.

In August, on the Day of Our Lady, while the King was besieging Lille, a letter came to the Queen, informing her that her husband had forsaken Madame de la Valliere for her Majesty's lady-in-waiting, the Marquise de Montespan. Moreover, the anonymous missive named "the prudent Duchesse de Montausier" as confidante and accomplice.

"It is horrible--it is infamous!" cried the Queen, as she flung aside the letter. "I shall never be persuaded that such is the case. My dear little Montespan enjoys my friendship and my esteem; others are jealous of her, but they shall not succeed. Perhaps the King may know the handwriting; he shall see it at once!" And that same evening she forwarded the letter to him.

The Comte de Vegin had been born, and the Queen was absolutely ignorant of his existence. My pregnancy with the Duc du Maine had likewise escaped her notice, owing to the large paniers which I took to wearing, and thus made the fashion. But the Court is a place where the best of friends are traitors. The Queen was at length convinced, after long refusing to be so, and from that day forward she cordially detested me.

While the King was conquering Holland, she instructed her chief almoner to have a sermon of a scandalous sort to be preached, which, delivered with all due solemnity in her presence, should grieve and wound me as much as possible.

On the day appointed, a preacher, totally unknown to us, gets into the pulpit, makes a long prayer for the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and then, rising gracefully, bows low to the Queen. Raising his eyes to heaven, he makes the sign of the cross and gives out the following text: "Woman, arise and sin no more. Go hence; I forgive thee."As he uttered these words, he looked hard at my pew, and soon made me understand by his egordium how interesting his discourse would be to me.

Written with rare grace of style, it was merely a piece of satire from beginning to end,--of satire so audacious that it was constantly levelled at the King.

The orator brought before us in succession lifelike portraits of the Queen, of her august spouse, of my children, of M. de Montespan, and of myself. Upon some he lavished praise; others he vehemently rebuked;while to others he gave tender pity. Anon he caused the lips of his hearers to curl in irony, and again, roused their indignation or touched them to tears.

Any one else would have been bored by such a rigmarole; it rather amused me.

That evening, and for a week afterwards, nothing else but this sermon was talked of at Versailles. The Queen had received complete satisfaction.

Before me she was at pains not to laugh, and I was pleased to see that her resentment had almost disappeared.

Upon his return, the King was for punishing such an offence as this.

Things are not easily hidden from him; his Majesty desired to know the name and rank of the ecclesiastic. The entire Court replied that he was a good-looking young Franciscan.

The chief almoner, being forced to state the monastery from which the preacher came, mentioned the Cordeliers of Paris. There it transpired that the monk told off by the prior for this enterprise had been too frightened to execute it, and had sent, as his deputy, a young actor from Orleans,--a brother of his, who thus could not say no.

So, as it happened, Queen Maria Theresa and her chief almoner (an exemplary person) had caused virtue to be preached to me by a young play-actor! The King dared not take further proceedings in so strange a matter, for fear lest one scandal might beget a far greater one. It was this that caused Madame Cornuel to remark, "The pulpit is in want of comedians; they work wonders there!"