CHAPTER XXXVIII

On Wednesday, the 27th of May, 1707, at three o’clock in the morning, Madame de Montespan, aged sixty, died very suddenly at the waters of Bourbon.  Her death made much stir, although she had long retired from the Court and from the world, and preserved no trace of the commanding influence she had so long possessed.  I need not go back beyond my own experience, and to the time of her reign as mistress of the King.  I will simply say, because the anecdote is little known, that her conduct was more the fault of her husband than her own.  She warned him as soon as she suspected the King to be in love with her; and told him when there was no longer any doubt upon her mind.  She assured him that a great entertainment that the King gave was in her honour.  She pressed him, she entreated him in the most eloquent manner, to take her away to his estates of Guyenne, and leave her there until the King had forgotten her or chosen another mistress.  It was all to no purpose; and Montespan was not long before repentance seized him; for his torment was that he loved her all his life, and died still in love with her—­although he would never consent to see her again after the first scandal.

Nor will I speak of the divers degrees which the fear of the devil at various times put to her separation from the Court; and I will elsewhere speak of Madame de Maintenon, who owed her everything, who fed her on serpents, and who at last ousted her from the Court.  What no one dared to say, what the King himself dared not, M. du Maine, her son, dared.  M. de Meaux (Bossuet) did the rest.  She went in tears and fury, and never forgave M. du Maine, who by his strange service gained over for ever to his interests the heart and the mighty influence of Madame de Maintenon.

The mistress, retired amongst the Community of Saint Joseph, which she had built, was long in accustoming herself to it.  She carried about her idleness and unhappiness to Bourbon, to Fontevrault, to D’Antin; she was many years without succeeding in obtaining mastery over herself.  At last God touched her.  Her sin had never been accompanied by forgetfulness; she used often to leave the King to go and pray in her cabinet; nothing could ever make her evade any fast day or meagre day; her austerity in fasting continued amidst all her dissipation.  She gave alms, was esteemed by good people, never gave way to doubt of impiety; but she was imperious, haughty and overbearing, full of mockery, and of all the qualities by which beauty with the power it bestows is naturally accompanied.  Being resolved at last to take advantage of an opportunity which had been given her against her will, she put herself in the hands of Pere de la Tour, that famous General of the Oratory.  From that moment to the time of her death her conversion continued steadily, and her penitence augmented.  She had first to get rid of the secret fondness she still entertained