“You have brought him up perfectly,” she said to Madame de Maintenon.  “His urbanity is of good origin; that is how a king’s son ought to act and speak: 

“His Majesty,” said Madame de Maintenon, “has been enchanted with your country-house; he spoke of it all the evening.  He even added that you had ordered it all yourself, without an architect, and that M. le Notre would not have done better.”

“M. le Notre,” replied the Princess, “came here for a little; he wanted to cut and destroy, and upset and disarrange, as with the King at Versailles.  But I am of a different mould to my cousin; I am not to be surprised with big words.  I saw that Le Notre thought only of expenditure and tyranny; I thanked him for his good intentions, and prayed him not to put himself out for me.  I found there thickets already made, of an indescribable charm; he wanted, on the instant, to clear them away, so that one could testify that all this new park was his.  If you please, madame, tell his Majesty that M. le Notre is the sworn enemy of Nature; that he sees only the pleasures of proprietorship in the future, and promises us cover and shade just at that epoch of our life when we shall only ask for sunshine in which to warm ourselves.”

She next led her guests towards the large apartments.  When she had come to her bedroom, she showed the Marquise the mysterious portrait, and asked if she recognised it.

“Ah, my God! ’tis himself!” said Madame de Maintenon at once.  “He sees, he breathes, he regards us; one might believe one heard him speak.  Why do you give yourself this torture?” continued the ambassadress.  “The continual presence of an unhappy and beloved being feeds your grief, and this grief insensibly undermines you.  In your place, Princess, I should put him elsewhere until a happier and more favourable hour.”

“That hour will never come,” cried Mademoiselle.

“Pardon me,” resumed Madame de Maintenon; “the King is never inhuman and inexorable; you should know that better than any one.  He punishes only against the protests of his heart, and, as soon as he can relent without impropriety or danger, he pardons.  M. de Lauzun, by refusing haughtily the marshal’s baton, which was offered him in despite of his youth, deeply offended the King, and the disturbance he allowed himself to make at Madame de Montespan’s depicted him as a dangerous and wrong-headed man.  Those are his sins.  Rest assured, Princess, that I am well informed.  But as I know, at the same time, that the King was much attached to him,—­and is still so, to some extent, and that a captivity of ten years is a rough school, I have the assurance that your Highness will not be thought importunate if you make today some slight attempt towards a clemency.”