“It is not from her that your compliment came to us; it is from M. le Duc du Maine, who is uprightness itself, and whose mouth has never lied.”

Monsieur then started playing at distraction and puerility; the medal-case was standing opened, his gaze was turned to it.  Then he came to me and said in a whisper:  “I pray you, come and look at the coin of Marcus Aurelius; do you not find that the King resembles that emperor in every feature?”

“You are joking,” I answered him.  “His Majesty is as much like him as you are like me.”

He insisted, and his brother, who witnessed our argument, wished to know the reason.  When he understood, he said to Monsieur:  “Madame de Montespan is right; I am not in the least like that Roman prince in face.  The one to whom I should wish to be like in merit is Trajan.”

“Trajan had fine qualities,” replied Monsieur; “that does not prevent me from preferring Marcus Aurelius.”

“On what grounds?” asked his Majesty.

“On the grounds that he shared his throne with Verus,” replied Monsieur, unhesitatingly.

The King flushed at this reply, and answered in few words:  “Marcus Aurelius’s action to his brother may, be called generous; it was none the less inconsiderate.  By his own confession, the Emperor Verus proved, by his debauchery and his vices, unworthy, of the honour which had been done him.  Happily, he died from his excesses during the Pannonian War, and Marcus Aurelius could only do well from that day on.”

Monsieur, annoyed with his erudition and confused at his escapade, sought to change the conversation.  The King, passing into his cabinet, left him entirely, in my charge.  I scolded him for his inconsequences, and he dared to implore me to put his daughter “in the right way,” to become one day Queen of France by marrying Monsieur le Dauphin, whom she loved already with her whole heart.

CHAPTER X.

The Benedictines of Fontevrault.—­The Head in the Basin.—­The Unfortunate Delivery.—­The Baptism of the Monster.—­The Courageous Marriage.—­Foundation of the Royal Abbey of Fontevrault.

Two or three days after our arrival at Fontevrault, the King, who loves to know all the geographical details of important places, asked me of the form and particulars of the celebrated abbey.  I gave him a natural description of it.

“They are two vast communities,” I told him, “which the founder, for some inexplicable whim, united in one domain, of an extent which astonishes the imagination.”

The Community of Benedictine Nuns is regarded as the first, because of the abbotorial dignity it possesses.  The Community of Benedictine Monks is only second,—­a fact which surprises greatly strangers and visitors.  Both in the monastery and the convent the buildings are huge and magnificent, the courts spacious, the woods and streams well distributed and well kept.