told him that he was a very sensible little fellow. ‘I can’t help being,’ said the child, ‘I have by me a lady who is sense itself.’ ‘Go and tell her,’ replied the king, ‘that you will give her this evening a hundred thousand francs for your sugar-plums.’ The mother gets me into trouble with the king, the son makes my peace with him; I am never for two days together in the same situation, and I do not get accustomed to this sort of life, I who thought I could make myself used to anything.” She often spoke of leaving the court. “As I tell you everything honestly,” she wrote in 1675 to her confessor, Abbe Gobelin, “I will not tell you that it is to serve God that I should like to leave the place where I am; I believe that I might work out my salvation here and elsewhere, but I see nothing to forbid us from thinking of our repose, and withdrawing from a position that vexes us every moment. I explained myself badly if you understood me to mean that I am thinking of being a nun; I am too old for a change of condition, and, according to the property I shall have, I shall look out for securing one full of tranquillity. In the world, all reaction is towards God; in a convent, all reaction is towards the world; there is one great reason; that of age comes next.” She did not, however, leave the court except to take to the waters the little Duke of Maine, who had become a cripple after a series of violent convulsions. “Never was anything more agreeable than the surprise which Madame de Maintenon gave the king,” writes Madame de Sdvigne to her daughter. “He had not expected the Duke of Maine till the next day, when he saw him come walking into his room, and only holding by the hand of his governess; he was transported with joy. M. do Louvois on her arrival went to call upon Madame de Maintenon; she supped at Madame de Richelieu’s, some kissing her hand, others her gown, and she making fun of them all, if she is not much changed; but they say that she is.” The king’s pleasure in conversing with the governess became more marked every day; Madame de Montespan frequently burst out into bitter complaints. “She reproaches me with her kindnesses, with her presents, with those of the king, and has told me that she fed me, and that I am strangling her; you know what the fact is; it is a strange thing that we cannot live together and that we cannot separate. I love her, and I cannot persuade myself that she hates me.” They found themselves alone together in one of the court carriages. “Let us not be duped by such a thing as this,” said Madame de Montespan, rudely; “let us talk as if we had no entanglements between us to arrange; it being understood, of course,” added she, “that we resume our entanglements when we get back.” “Madame de Maintenon accepted the proposal,” says Madame de Caylus, who tells the story, “and they kept their word to the letter.” Madame de Maintenon had taken a turn for preaching virtue. “The king passed two