The ill-humour of Madame de Montespan finished the work.  She had a good deal of that quality, and had become accustomed to give it full swing.  The King was the object of it more frequently than anybody; he was still amorous; but her ill-humour pained him.  Madame de Maintenon reproached Madame de Montespan for this, and thus advanced herself in the King’s favour.  The King, by degrees, grew accustomed to speak sometimes to Madame de Maintenon; to unbosom to her what he wished her to say to Madame de Montespan; at last to relate to her the chagrin this latter caused him, and to consult her thereupon.

Admitted thus into the intimate confidence of the lover and the mistress, and this by the King’s own doing, the adroit waiting-woman knew how to cultivate it, and profited so well by her industry that by degrees she supplanted Madame de Montespan, who perceived, too late, that her friend had become necessary to the King.  Arrived at this point, Madame de Maintenon made, in her turn, complaints to the King of all she had to suffer, from a mistress who spared even him so little; and by dint of these mutual complaints about Madame de Montespan, Madame de Maintenon at last took her place, and knew well how to keep it.

Fortune, I dare not say Providence, which was preparing for the haughtiest of kings, humiliation the most profound, the most-public, the most durable, the most unheard-of, strengthened more and more his taste for this woman, so adroit and expert at her trade; while the continued ill-humour and jealousy of Madame de Montespan rendered the new union still more solid.  It was this that Madame de Sevigne so prettily paints, enigmatically, in her letters to Madame de Grignan, in which she sometimes talks of these Court movements; for Madame de Maintenon had been in Paris in the society of Madame de Sevigne, of Madame de Coulange, of Madame de La Fayette, and had begun to make them feel her importance.  Charming touches are to be seen in the same style upon the favour, veiled but brilliant enjoyed by Madame de Soubise.

It was while the King was in the midst of his partiality for Madame de Maintenon that the Queen died.  It was at the same time, too, that the ill-humour of Madame de Montespan became more and more insupportable.  This imperious beauty, accustomed to domineer and to be adored, could not struggle against the despair, which the prospect of her fall caused her.  What carried her beyond all bounds, was that she could no longer disguise from herself, that she had an abject rival whom she had supported, who owed everything to her; whom she had so much liked that she had several times refused to dismiss her when pressed to do so by the King; a rival, too, so beneath her in beauty, and older by several years; to feel that it was this lady’s-maid, not to say this servant, that the King most frequently went to see; that he sought only her; that he could not dissimulate his uneasiness if he did not find her; that he quitted all for her; in fine, that at all moments she (Madame de Montespan) needed the intervention of Madame de Maintenon, in order to attract the King to reconcile her with him, or to obtain the favours she asked for.  It was then, in times so propitious to the enchantress, that the King became free by the death of the Queen.