She employed her art so well, that after a time the project upon Lille did not appear so easy to the King as at first.  Soon after, it seemed difficult; then too hazardous and ruinous; so that at last it was abandoned, and Boufflers had orders to cease his preparations and return to France!  She succeeded thus in an affair she considered the most important she had undertaken during all her life.  Chamillart was much touched, but little surprised:  As soon as he knew his secret had been confided to Madame de Maintenon he had feeble hope for it.  Now he began to fear for himself.

CHAPTER XLIV.

One of the reasons Madame de Maintenon had brought forward, which much assisted her in opposing the siege of Lille, was the excessive cold of this winter.  The winter was, in fact, terrible; the memory of man could find no parallel to it.  The frost came suddenly on Twelfth Night, and lasted nearly two months, beyond all recollection.  In four days the Seine and all the other rivers were frozen, and,—­what had never been seen before,—­the sea froze all along the coasts, so as to bear carts, even heavily laden, upon it.  Curious observers pretended that this cold surpassed what had ever been felt in Sweden and Denmark.  The tribunals were closed a considerable time.  The worst thing was, that it completely thawed for seven or eight days, and then froze again as rudely as before.  This caused the complete destruction of all kinds of vegetation—­even fruit-trees; and others of the most hardy kind, were destroyed.  The violence of the cold was such, that the strongest elixirs and the most spirituous liquors broke their bottles in cupboards of rooms with fires in them, and surrounded by chimneys, in several parts of the chateau of Versailles.  As I myself was one evening supping with the Duc de Villeroy, in his little bedroom, I saw bottles that had come from a well-heated kitchen, and that had been put on the chimney-piece of this bed-room (which was close to the kitchen), so frozen, that pieces of ice fell into our glasses as we poured out from them.  The second frost ruined everything.  There were no walnut-trees, no olive-trees, no apple-trees, no vines left, none worth speaking of, at least.  The other trees died in great numbers; the gardens perished, and all the grain in the earth.  It is impossible to imagine the desolation of this general ruin.  Everybody held tight his old grain.  The price of bread increased in proportion to the despair for the next harvest.  The most knowing resowed barley where there had been wheat, and were imitated by the majority.  They were the most successful, and saved all; but the police bethought themselves of prohibiting this, and repented too late!  Divers edicts were published respecting grain, researches were made and granaries filled; commissioners were appointed to scour the provinces, and all these steps contributed to increase the general dearness and poverty, and that, too, at a time when, as was afterwards proved, there was enough corn in the country to feed all France for two years, without a fresh ear being reaped.