Among all the personages belonging to the royal family, the Libertins had only to consider the Queen Mother, their declared enemy, and the King himself, as yet too reserved for it to be divined how he contemplated accommodating pleasure and religion. It had not taken long to perceive that he would not restrain himself in pleasure. He was married, June 9, 1660. A year later commenced the series of mistresses imposed upon the royal household and upon France, they and their children, in a fashion which recalls Oriental polygamy rather than the manners of the Occident. Louis XIV. had felt himself incapable of a virtuous life. One day, when his mother, profiting by the tenderness awakened by a reconciliation--they had not spoken for some time to each other--represented the scandal of his liaison with Mlle. de La Valliere, he responded cordially with tears of grief which proceeded from the bottom of his heart, where were still some remains of his former piety,--"that he knew his wrong; that he felt sometimes the pain and shame of it; that he had tried his best not to offend God and not to yield to his passions, but he was forced to confess that they were stronger than his reason, that he could not resist their violence, and that he no longer felt any desire so to do."[128] This conversation took place in July, 1664. The following autumn, the King having found the Queen, his wife, in tears in her oratoire on account of a too-well founded jealousy, he gave her the hope of finding him at thirty "a good husband,"--a somewhat cynical suggestion. He not only had "violent passions," but he had not discovered any reasons for restraining himself in regard to women. One reads in his _Memoires_, which were written for the dauphin to see, a passage worthy of Lord Chesterfield, in which he gives his son his ideas upon the subject of kings' mistresses. The page referred to relates to the year 1667, in which commenced the war of the _Devolution_:[129] Before departing for the army, I sent an edict to Parliament. I raised to a Duchy the territory of Vaujours in favour of Mlle. de La Valliere and recognised a daughter of mine by her. For, resolving in accompanying the army not to remain apart from possible perils, I thought it just to assure to the child the honour of her birth, and to give to her mother an establishment suitable to the affection which since her sixth year I had felt for her. I might have done well not to mention this attachment, the example of which is not good to follow; but having drawn much instruction from the failings of others, I have not wished to deprive you of the lessons you may learn from mine. [Illustration: =LOUISE DE LA VALLIERE= From the engraving by Flameng after the painting by Petitot] [Blank Page]