The great talents of M. de Louvois, and the difficulty of replacing him, became his refuge and safeguard.  But, from the moment that he no longer received the intimate confidence of the King, and the esteem of the lady in waiting who sits upon the steps of the throne, he can only look upon himself at Versailles as a traveller with board and lodging.

His revenues are incalculable.  The people, seeing his enormous corpulence, maintain, or pretend, that he is stuffed with gold.  His general administration of posts alone is worth a million.  His other offices are in proportion.

His chateau of Meudon-Fleury, a magical and quite ideal site, is the finest pleasure-house that ever yet the sun shone on.  The park and the gardens are in the form of an amphitheatre, and are, in my opinion, sublime, in a far different way from those of Vaux.  M. Fouquet, condemned to death, in punishment for his superb chateau, died slowly in prison; the Marquis de Louvois will not, perhaps, die in a stronghold; but his horoscope has already warned that minister to be prepared for some great adversity.  He knows it; sometimes he is concerned about it; and everything leads one to believe that he will come to a bad end.  He has done more harm than people believe.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

The Reformed Religion and Painting on Enamel—­Petitot and Heliogabalus.—­Theological Discussion with the Marquise.—­The King’s Intervention.—­Louis XIV.  Renders His Account to the Christian and Most Christian Painter.—­The King’s Word Is Not to Be Resisted.—­Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

At the moment when the first edicts, were issued against the public exercise of the Reformed Religion, the famous and incomparable Petitot, refusing all the supplications of France and of Europe, executed for me, in my chateau of Clagny, five infinitely precious portraits, upon which it was his caprice only to work alternately, and which still demanded from him a very great number of sittings.  One of these five portraits was that of the King, copied from that great and magnificent picture of Mignard, where he was represented at the age of twenty, in the costume of a Greek hero, in all the lustre of his youth.  His Majesty had given me this little commission for more than a year, and I desired, with all my heart, to be able soon to fulfil his expectation.  He destined this miniature for the Emperor of China or the Sultan.

I went to see M. Petitot at Clagny.  When he saw me he came to me with a wrathful air, and, presenting me his unfinished enamel, he said to me:  “Here, madame, is your Greek hero; his new edicts finish us, but, as for me, I shall not finish him.  With the best intentions in the world, and all the respect that is due to him, my just resentment would pass into my brush; I should give him the traits of Heliogabalus, which would probably not delight him.”

“Do you think so, monsieur?” said I to my artist.  “Is it thus you speak of the King, our master,—­of a King who has affection for you, and has proved it to:  you so many times?”