The Marquis de Lauzun, having learnt the steps taken by the Queen of Portugal, whom he had never been able to endure, grew violently angry, and said in twenty houses that he had not come out of one prison to throw himself into another.

These were all the thanks the Queen got for her efforts; and, like Mademoiselle de Montpensier, she detested, with all her soul, the man she had loved with all her heart.

The Marquis de Lauzun was one of the handsomest men in the world; but his character spoiled everything.

CHAPTER XXV.

The Nephews, the Nieces, the Cousins and the Brother of Madame de Maintenon.—­The King’s Debut.—­The Marshal’s Silver Staff.

The family of Madame de Maintenon had not only neglected but despised her when she was poor and living on her pension of two thousand francs.  Since my protection and favour had brought her into contact with the sun that gives life to all things, and this radiant star had shed on-her his own proper rays and light, all her relatives in the direct, oblique, and collateral line had remembered her, and one saw no one but them in her antechambers, in her chamber, and at Court.

Some of them were not examples of deportment and good breeding; they were gentlemen who had spent all their lives in little castles in Angoumois and Poitou, a kind of noble ploughmen, who had only their silver swords to distinguish them from their vine-growers and herds.  Others, to be just, honoured the new position of the Marquise; and amongst those I must place first the Marquis de Langallerie and the two sons of the Marquis de Villette, his cousin, german.  The Abbe d’Aubigne, whom she had discovered obscurely hidden among the priests of Saint Sulpice, she had herself presented to the King, who had discovered in him the air of an apostle, and then to Pere de la Chaise, who had hastened to make him Archbishop of Rouen, reserving for him ‘in petto’ the cardinal’s hat, if the favour of the lady in waiting was maintained.

Among her lady relatives who had come from the provinces at the rumour of this favour, the Marquise distinguished and exhibited with satisfaction the three Mademoiselles de Sainte Hermine, the daughters of a Villette, if I am not mistaken, and pretty and graceful all three of them.  She had also brought to her Court, and more particularly attached to her person, a very pretty child, only daughter of the Marquis de Villette, and sister, consequently, of the Comte and of the Chevalier de Villette, whom I have previously mentioned.  This swarm of nephews, cousins, and nieces garnished the armchairs and sofas of her chamber.  They served as comrades and playfellows to the legitimate princes and as pages of honour to my daughter; and when the carriage of the Marquise came into the country for her drives, the whole of this pretty colony formed a train and court for her,—­a proof of her credit.