A little later, it was discovered that there was a regular and active correspondence between these young people in Germany and others who had remained in Paris or at the Court.  The first minister had a certain page, one of the most agile, pursued; he was caught up with at Strasburg; his valise was seized.  The Marquis de Louvois, desiring to give the King the pleasure of himself opening these mysterious letters, handed him the budget, the seals intact, and his Majesty thanked him for this attention.  These thanks were the last that that powerful minister was destined to receive from his master; his star waned from that hour, never again to recover its lustre; all his credit failed and crashed to the ground.  This correspondence—­spied on with so much zeal, surprised and carried off with such good fortune—­informed the astonished monarch that, in the Louvois family, in his house and circle, his royal character, his manners, his affections, his tastes, his person, his whole life, were derisively censured.  The beloved son-in-law of the minister, speaking with an open heart to his friends, who were travelling, and absent, represented the King to them as a sort of country-gentleman, given up now to the domestic and uniform life of the manor-house, more than ever devoted to his dame bourgeoise, and making love ecstatically at the feet of this young nymph of fifty seasons.

M. de la Roche-Guyon and M. de Liancourt, sons of La Rochefoucauld, who expressed themselves with the same boldness, went so far as to say of their ruler that he was but a stage and tinsel king.  The son-in-law of Louvois accused him of being most courageous in his gallery, but of turning pale on the eve, and at the moment, of an action; and D’Alincourt, son of Villeroi, carried his outrages further still.  No one knows better than myself how unjust these accusations were, and are.  I was sensible of the mortification such a reading must have caused to the most sensitive, the most irritable of princes; but I rejoiced at the humiliation that the lady in waiting felt for her share in this unpardonable correspondence.  The annoyance that I read for some days on her handsome face consoled me, for the time being, for her great success at my expense.

Madame la Princesse de Conti, whom the King, up to this time, had not only cherished but adored, found also, in those documents, the term of excessive favour.  A letter from her to her husband said:  “I have just given myself a maid of honour, wishing to spare Madame de Maintenon the trouble, or the pleasure, of giving me one herself.”

She was summoned to Versailles, as she may very well have expected.  The King, paying no attention to her tears, said to her:  “I believed in your affection; I have done everything to deserve it; it is lamentable to me to be unable to count on it longer.  Your cruel letter is in Madame de Maintenon’s hands.  She will let you read it again before committing it to the fire, and I beg you to inform her what is the harm she has done you.”