This set her afloat again, and, step by step, introduced her to the Hotel d’Albret, and thence to the Hotel de Richelieu, and elsewhere; so she passed from one house to the other.  In these houses Madame Scarron was far from being on the footing of the rest of the company.  She was more like a servant than a guest.  She was completely at the beck and call of her hosts; now to ask for firewood; now if a meal was nearly ready; another time if the coach of so-and-so or such a one had returned; and so on, with a thousand little commissions which the use of bells, introduced a long time after, differently disposes of.

It was in these houses, principally in the Hotel de Richelieu, much more still in the Hotel d’Albret, where the Marechal d’Albret lived in great state, that Madame Scarron made the majority of her acquaintances.  The Marechal was cousin-german of M. de Montespan, very intimate with him, and with Madame de Montespan.  When she became the King’s mistress he became her counsellor, and abandoned her husband.

To the intimacy between the Marechal d’Albret and Madame de Montespan, Madame de Maintenon owed the good fortune she met with fourteen or fifteen years later.  Madame de Montespan continually visited the Hotel d’Albret, and was much impressed with Madame Scarron.  She conceived a friendship for the obliging widow, and when she had her first children by the King—­M. du Maine and Madame la Duchesse, whom the King wished to conceal—­she proposed that they should be confided to Madame Scarron.  A house in the Marais was accordingly given to her, to lodge in with them, and the means to bring them up, but in the utmost secrecy.  Afterwards, these children were taken to Madame de Montespan, then shown to the King, and then by degrees drawn from secrecy and avowed.  Their governess, being established with them at the Court, more and more pleased Madame de Montespan, who several times made the King give presents to her.  He, on the other hand, could not endure her; what he gave to her, always little, was by excess of complaisance and with a regret that he did not hide.

The estate of Maintenon being for sale, Madame de Montespan did not let the King rest until she had drawn from him enough to buy it for Madame Scarron, who thenceforth assumed its name.  She obtained enough also for the repair of the chateau, and then attacked the King for means to arrange the garden, which the former owners had allowed to go to ruin.

It was at the toilette of Madame de Montespan that these demands were made.  The captain of the guards alone followed the King there.  M. le Marechal de Lorges, the truest man that ever lived, held that post then, and he has often related to me the scene he witnessed.  The King at first turned a deaf ear to the request of Madame de Montespan, and then refused.  Annoyed that she still insisted, he said he had already done more than enough for this creature; that he could not understand the fancy of