The Court is, no doubt, a fine country,—­finer than ever under the present reign.  The more magnificent the Court is, the more uneasy do I become.  Wealth and opulence are needed there; and to your family I never figured as a Croesus.  By dint of order and thrift, we shall ere long have satisfactorily settled our affairs; and I promise you that our stay in the Provinces shall last no longer than is necessary to achieve that desirable result.  Three, four, five,—­let us say, six years.  Well, that is not an eternity!  By the time we come back we shall both of us still be young.  Come, then, my dearest Athenais, come, and make closer acquaintance with these imposing Pyrenees, every ravine of which is a landscape and every valley an Eden.  To all these beauties, yours is missing; you shall be here, like Dian, the goddess of these noble forests.  All our gentlefolk await you, admiring your picture on the sweetmeat-box.  They are minded to hold many pleasant festivals in your honour; you may count upon having a veritable Court.  Here it is that you will meet the old Warnais nobility that followed Henri IV. and placed the sceptre in his hand.  Messieurs de Grammont and de Biron are our neighbours; their grim castles dominate the whole district, so that they seem like kings.

Our Chateau de Montespan will offer you something less severe; the additions made for my mother twenty years ago are infinitely better than anything that you will leave behind you in Paris.  We have here the finest fruits that ever grew in any earthly paradise.  Our huge, luscious peaches are composed of sugar, violets, carnations, amber, and jessamine; strawberries and raspberries grow everywhere; and naught may vie with the excellence of the water, the vegetables, and the milk.

You are fond of scenery and of sketching from nature; there are half a dozen landscapes here for you that leave Claude Lorrain far behind.  I mean to take you to see a waterfall, twelve hundred and seventy feet in height, neither more nor less.  What are your fountains at Saint Germain and Chambord compared with such marvellous things as these?

Now, madame, I am really tired of coaxing and flattering you, as I have done in this letter and in preceding ones.  Do you want me, or do you not?  Your position as Court lady, so you say, keeps you near the monarch; ask, then, or let me ask, for leave of absence.  After having been for four consecutive years Lady of the Palace, consent to become Lady of the Castle, since your duties towards your spouse require it.  The young King, favourite as he is with the ladies, will soon find ten others to replace you.  And I, dearest Athenais, find it hard even to think of replacing you, in spite of your cruel absence, which at once annoys and grieves me.  I am—­no, I shall be—­always and ever yours, when you are always and ever mine.

Montespan.