The atmosphere does not meet with your approval, and, in order to have madame's society, you desire to disgust her with it herself, and deprive us of her?""Sire," answered Ninon, "I have not enough power or authority to render my intentions formidable, and my long regrets will be excused, I hope, since, if madame left Versailles, she would cause the same grief there that she has caused us.""One has one's detractors in every conceivable locality. If Madame de Maintenon has met with one at Versailles she would not be exempt from them anywhere else. At Paris, you would be without rampart or armour, I like to believe; but deign to grant me this preference,--I can very well protect my friends. I think the town is ill-informed, and that Madame de Montespan has no interest in separating madame from her children, who are also mine.
You will greatly oblige me, mademoiselle, if you will adopt this opinion and publish it in your society, which is always select, though it is so numerous."Then the King, passing to other subjects, brought up, of his own accord, the place of farmer-general, which happened to be vacant; and he said to Mademoiselle de l'Enclos: "I promise you this favour with pleasure, the first which you have ever solicited of me, and I must beg you to address yourself to Madame de Maintenon on every occasion when your relations or yourself have something to ask from me. You must see clearly, mademoiselle, that it is well to leave madame in this place, as an agent with me for you, and your particular ambassadress."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?" Isaid 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!""Ah, madame, what is it you suggest!" the lady in waiting replied to me, almost taking offence. "I have never been eccentric or singular with any one in the world, and you want me to begin with my King! It cannot be, I assure you! Suggest to me reasonable and possible things, and I will enter into all your views with all my heart and without hesitation."This reply shocked me to the point of irritation.
"I believed you long to be a simple and disinterested soul," I said to her, "and it was in this belief that I gave you my cordial affection.
Now I read your heart, and all your projects are revealed to me. You are not only greedy of respect and consideration, you are ambitious to the point of madness. The King's widowhood has awakened all your wild dreams; you confided to me fifteen years ago that the soothsayer of the Marechale d'Albret had predicted for you a sceptre and a crown."At these words, the governess made me a sign to lower my voice, and said to me, with an accent of candour and good faith, which it is impossible for me to forget: "I confided to you at the time that puerility of society, just as the Marechale and the Marshal (without believing it)related it to all France. But this prognostication need not alarm you, madame," she added; "a King like ours is incapable of such an extravagance, and if he were to determine on it, it would not have my countenance nor approval.
"I do not think that thus far I have passed due limits; the granddaughter of a great noble, of a first gentleman of the chamber, I have been able to become a lady in waiting without offending the eyes; but the lady in waiting will never be Queen, and I give you my permission to insult me publicly when I am."Such was this conversation, to which I have not added a word. We shall see soon how Madame de Maintenon kept her word to me, and if I am not right in owing her a grudge for this promise with a double meaning, with which it was her caprice to decoy me by her shuffling.
