Mme. de Montespan’s power, lasting fourteen years, was almost unlimited, and was the epoch of courtiers intoxicated with passion and consumed by vice, infatuated with the king and his mistress, whose title as maitresse-en-titre was considered an official one, conferring the same privileges and demanding the same ceremonies and etiquette as did a high court position.  The only opposition incurred was from the clergy, who eventually, by uniting their forces with the influence of Mme. de Maintenon, brought about the disgrace of the mistress.

When, in 1675, she desired to perform her Easter duties publicly at Versailles, the priest refused to grant absolution until she should discontinue her wanton, adulterous life.  She appealed to the king, and he referred the decision of the matter to Bossuet, who decided that it was an imperative duty to deny absolution to public sinners of notorious lives who refused to abandon them.  This was immediately before her legal separation from her husband.

Influenced by the preaching of men like Bourdaloue and Bossuet, the king resolved to abandon his powerful mistress; in 1686 she was finally separated from Louis XIV., but did not leave Versailles until 1691, when, becoming reconciled to her fate, she decided to retire to a convent.  Bossuet became her spiritual adviser, and described her habits in the following letter to the king: 

“I find Mme. de Montespan sufficiently tranquil.  She occupies herself greatly in good works.  I see her much affected by the verities I propose to her, which are the same I uttered to your majesty.  To her—­as to you—­I have offered the words by which God commands us to yield our whole hearts to him; they have caused her to shed many tears.  May God establish these verities in the depths of the hearts of both of you, in order that so many tears, so much suffering, so many efforts as you have made to subdue yourselves, may not be in vain.”

The king did not wholly abandon his mistress; from a material point of view, she was more powerful than ever, for Louis XIV. gave orders to his minister, Colbert, to do for Mme. de Montespan whatever she wished, and her wishes caused a heavy drain upon the treasury.  The king continued to pay court to other favorites, such as the Princesse de Soubese and Mlle. de Fontanges; the latter was his third mistress, but her career was of short duration, as one of the last acts of Mme. de Montespan was, it is said, the poisoning of Mlle. de Fontanges; this, however, is not generally accepted as true, although the Princesse Palatine wrote the following which throws suspicion upon the former favorite:  “Mme. de Montespan was a fiend incarnate, but the Fontanges was good and simple.  The latter is dead—­because, they say, the former put poison in her milk.  I do not know whether or not this is true, but what I do know well is that two of the Fontanges’s people died, saying publicly that they had been poisoned.”  With the increasing influence of Mme. de Maintenon, the king completely forgot his former mistress.