Madame Scarron, whom he so basely deserted for the superior charms of her friend Ninon, often gave him a bad quarter of an hour.  When she became the mistress of the king and, as Madame de Maintenon, really held the reins of power, visions of the Bastile thronged his brain.  He knew perfectly well that he had scorned the charms of Madame Scarron, who believed them irresistible, and that he deserved whatever punishment she might inflict upon him.  She might have procured a lettre de cachet, had him immured in a dungeon or his head removed from his shoulders as easily as order a dinner, but she did nothing to gratify a spirit of revenge, utterly ignoring his existence.

Added to these trifling circumstances, trifling in comparison with what follows, was the furious jealousy of his wife, Madame la Marquise.  She was violently angry and did not conceal her hatred for the woman who had stolen her husband’s affections.  The Marquise was a trifle vulgar and common in her manner of manifesting her displeasure, but the Marquis, a very polite and affable gentleman, did not pay the slightest attention to his wife’s daily recriminations, but continued to amuse himself with the charming Ninon.

Under such circumstances each was compelled to have a separate social circle, the Marquis entertaining his friends with the adorable Ninon as the center of attraction, and Madame la Marquise doing her best to offer counter attractions.  Somehow, Ninon drew around her all the most desirable partis among the flower of the nobility and wits, leaving the social circle managed by la Marquise to languish for want of stamina.  It was a constant source of annoyance to the Marquise to see her rival’s entertainments so much in repute and her own so poorly attended, and she was at her wits’ end to devise something that would give them eclat.  One of her methods, and an impromptu scene at one of her drawing-rooms, will serve to show the reason why Madame la Marquise was not in good repute and why she could not attract the elite of Paris to her entertainments.

La Marquise was a very vain, moreover, a very ignorant woman, a “nouvelle riche” in fact, or what might be termed in modern parlance “shoddy,” without tact, sense, or savoir faire.  One day at a grand reception, some of her guests desired to see her young son, of whom she was very proud, and of whose talents and virtues she was always boasting.  He was sent for and came into the presence accompanied by his tutor, an Italian savant who never left his side.  From praising his beauty of person, they passed to his mental qualities.  Madame la Marquise, enchanted at the caresses her son was receiving and aiming to create a sensation by showing off his learning, took it into her head to have his tutor put him through an examination in history.

“Interrogate my son upon some of his recent lessons in history,” said she to the tutor, who was not at all loth to show his own attainments by the brilliancy of his pupil.