The King, suddenly showing himself, somewhat to the surprise of the ladies, said:  “I have long wished, mademoiselle, this unique and agreeable opportunity for which I am indebted to Madame de Maintenon.  Be seated, I pray you, and permit ‘my Highness’, slightly perfumed though I be, to enjoy for a moment your witty conversation and society.  What!  The atmosphere does not meet with your approval, and, in order to have madame’s society, you desire to disgust her with it herself, and deprive us of her?”

“Sire,” answered Ninon, “I have not enough power or authority to render my intentions formidable, and my long regrets will be excused, I hope, since, if madame left Versailles, she would cause the same grief there that she has caused us.”

“One has one’s detractors in every conceivable locality.  If Madame de Maintenon has met with one at Versailles she would not be exempt from them anywhere else.  At Paris, you would be without rampart or armour, I like to believe; but deign to grant me this preference,—­I can very well protect my friends.  I think the town is ill-informed, and that Madame de Montespan has no interest in separating madame from her children, who are also mine.

“You will greatly oblige me, mademoiselle, if you will adopt this opinion and publish it in your society, which is always select, though it is so numerous.”

Then the King, passing to other subjects, brought up, of his own accord, the place of farmer-general, which happened to be vacant; and he said to Mademoiselle de l’Enclos:  “I promise you this favour with pleasure, the first which you have ever solicited of me, and I must beg you to address yourself to Madame de Maintenon on every occasion when your relations or yourself have something to ask from me.  You must see clearly, mademoiselle, that it is well to leave madame in this place, as an agent with me for you, and your particular ambassadress.”

I learnt all these curious details five or six days later from a young colonel, related to me, to whom Mademoiselle de l’Enclos narrated her admission and interview at Versailles.  In reproducing the whole of this scene, I have not altered the sense of a word; I have only sought to make up for the charm which every conversation loses that is reported by a third party who was not actually an eyewitness.

This confidence informed me that prejudices were springing up against me in the mind of the favourite.  I went to see her, as though my visit were an ordinary one, and asked her what one was to think of Ninon’s interview with the King.

“Yes,” she said, “his Majesty has for a long time past had a great desire to see her, as a person of much wit, and of whom he has heard people speak since his youth.  He imagined her to have larger eyes, and something a little more virile in her physiognomy.  He was greatly, and, I must say, agreeably surprised, to find that he had been deceived.  ’One can see eyes of far greater