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 size,’ his Majesty told me, ’but not more brilliant, more animated or amiable.  Her mouth, admirably moulded, is almost as small as Madame de Montespan’s.  Her pretty, almost round face has something Georgian about it, unless I am mistaken.  She says, and lets you understand, everything she likes; she awaits your replies without interruption; her contradictions preserve urbanity; she is respectful without servility; her pleasant voice, although not of silver, is none the less the voice of a nymph.  In conclusion, I am charmed with her.’”

“Does she believe me hostile to your prosperity, my dear Marquise?” I said at once to Madame de Maintenon, who seemed slightly confused, and answered:  “Mademoiselle de l’Enclos is not personally of that opinion; she had heard certain remarks to that effect in the salons of the town; and I have given her my most explicit assurance that, if you should ever cease to care for me, my inclination and my gratitude would be none the less yours, madame, so long as I should live.”

“You owe me those sentiments,” I resumed, with a trifle too much fire; “I have a right to count on them.  But it is most painful to me, I confess, after having given all my youth to the King, to see him now cool down, even in his courtesy.  The hours which he used to pass with me he gives to you, and it is impossible that this innovation should not seem startling here, since all Paris is informed of it, and Mademoiselle de l’Enclos has discussed it with you.”

“I owe everything that I am to the goodness of the King,” she answered me.  “Would you have me, when he comes to me, bid him go elsewhere, to you or somebody else, it matters not?”

“No, but I should be glad if your countenance did not, at such a moment, expand like a sunflower; I should like you, at the risk of somewhat belying yourself, to have the strength to moderate and restrain that vein of talk and conversation of which you have given yourself the supremacy and monopoly; I wish you had the generosity to show, now and again, less wit.  This sort of regime and abstinence would not destroy you off-hand, and the worst that could result to you from it would be to pass in his eyes for a woman of a variable and intermittent wit; what a great calamity!”