“She will accept out of courtesy,” he said to me, putting on an air of mockery.  And as the time for the Council was noted by him on my clock, he went away without adding more.

Since M. le Duc du Maine had grown up, and Mademoiselle de Nantes had been confided to the Marquise de Montchevreuil, Madame de Maintenon continued to occupy her handsome apartment on the Princes’ Court.  There she received innumerable visits, she paid assiduous court to the Queen, who had suddenly formed a taste for her, and took her on her walks and her visits to the communities; but this new Marquise saw me rarely.  Since the affair of the vine-grower, killed on the road, she declared that I had insulted her before everybody, and that I had ordered her imperiously to return to my carriage, as though she had been a waiting-maid, or some other menial.  Her excessive sensibility readily afforded her this pretext, so that she neglected and visibly overlooked me.

As she did not come to me, I betook myself to her at a tolerably early hour, before the flood of visitors, and started her on the history of the lady in waiting.

“His Majesty has spoken of it to me,” she said, “as of a thing possible; but I do not think there is anything settled yet in the matter.”

“Will you accept,” I asked her, “supposing the King to insist?”

“I should like a hundred times better,” she replied, “to go and live in independence in my little kingdom of Maintenon, and with my own hands gather on my walls those velvet, brilliant peaches, which grow so fine in those districts.  But if the King commands me to remain at Court, and form our young Bavarian Princess in the manners of this country, have I the right, in good conscience, to refuse?”

“Your long services have gained you the right to desire and take your retirement,” I said to her; “in your place, I should insist upon the necessities of my health.  And the Court of France will not fall nor change its physiognomy, even if a German or Iroquois Dauphine should courtesy awry, or in bad taste.”

Madame de Maintenon began to laugh, and assured me that “her post as lady in waiting would be an actual burden, if the King had destined her for it in spite of herself, and there should be no means of withdrawing from it.”

At this speech I saw clearly that things were already fixed.  Not wishing to call upon me the reproaches of my lord, I carried the conversation no further.

CHAPTER XII.

The “Powder of Inheritance.”—­The Chambre Ardente.—­The Comtesse de
Soissons’s Arrest Decreed.—­The Marquise de Montespan Buys Her
Superintendence of the Queen’s Council.—­Madame de Soubise.—­Madame de
Maintenon and the King.

At the time of the poisonings committed by Madame de Brinvilliers, the Government obtained evidence that a powder, called “the powder of inheritance,” was being sold in Paris, by means of which impatient heirs shortened the days of unfortunate holders, and entered into possession before their time.