The time for mass being come, Madame de Maintenon said to the fair Epicurean, with a smile:  “You are one of us, are you not?  The music will be delicious in the chapel to-day; you will not have a moment of weariness.”

Ninon, meeting this slight reproach with a smile of propriety, replied that she adored and respected everything which the monarch respected.

During the service, the King, tranquilly, secluded in his golden box, could see and examine the lady at his leisure, without compromising himself or embarrassing her by his gaze.  As for her, her decent and quite appropriate attitude merited for her the approval of her old friend, of the King, and of the most critical eyes.

The monarch, in effect, departed, not for the Chateau of Marly, but for Trianon; and hardly had he reached there before, in a little, very close carriage, he was brought back to Versailles.  He went up to Madame de Maintenon’s apartments by the little staircase in the Prince’s Court, and stole into the glass closet without being observed, except by a solitary lackey.

The ladies, believing themselves to be alone and at liberty, talked without ceremony or constraint, as though they had been but twenty years old.  The King was very much grieved at the things which were said, but he heard, without losing a word, the following dialogue or interview: 

Ninon de L’ENCLOS.—­It is not my preservation which should surprise you, since from morning to night I breathe that voluptuous air of independence which refreshes the blood, and puts in play its circulation.  I am morally the same person whom you came to see in the pretty little house in the Rue de Tournelles.  My dressing-gown, as you well know, was my preferred and chosen garb.  To-day, as then, Madame la Marquise, I should choose to place on my escutcheon the Latin device of the towns of San Marino and Lucca,—­Libertas.  You have complimented me on my beauty; I congratulate you upon yours, and I am surprised that you have so kept and preserved it in the midst of the constraints and servitude that grandeur and greatness involve.

Madame de Maintenon.—­At the commencement, I argued as you argue, and believed that I should never get to the year’s end without disgust.  Little by little I imposed silence upon my emotions and my regrets.  A life of great activity and occupation, by separating us, as it were, from ourselves, extinguishes those exacting niceties, both of our proper sensibility, and of our self-conceit.  I remembered my sufferings, my fears, and my privations after the death of that poor man;—­[It was so that she commonly spoke of her husband, Scarron.]—­and since labour has been the yoke imposed by God on every human being, I submitted with a good grace to the respectable labour of education.  Few teachers are attached to their pupils; I attached myself to mine with tenderness, with delight.  It is true that it was my privilege to find the King’s children amiable and pretty, as few children are.