Even her manners seemed calculated to repel, rather than attract the man she meant to conquer; for she treated him, from the first, with a familiarity amounting almost to rudeness, and a wilfulness to which he was by no means accustomed. There was, at any rate, something novel and piquant in an attitude so different from that of all other Court ladies. Resentment was soon replaced by interest, and interest by attraction; until Louis, before he was aware of it, began to find the society of the impish, mocking, defiant maid from the convent more to his taste than that of the most fascinating women of his Court. The more he saw of her, the more effectually he came under her spell. Each day found her in some new and tantalising mood; and as she drew him more and more into her toils, she kept him there by her ingenuity in devising novel pleasures and entertainments for him, until, within a month of setting eyes on her, he was telling Madame de Mailly, he "loved her sister more than herself." One of the first evidences of his favour was to provide her with a husband in the Comte de Vintimille, and a dower of two hundred thousand livres. He promised her a post as lady-in-waiting to Madame la Dauphine and gave her a sumptuous suite of rooms at Versailles. He even conferred on her husband the honour of handing him his shirt on the wedding-night, an evidence of high favour such as no other bridegroom had enjoyed. It was thus little surprise to anyone to find the Comtesse-bride not only her sister's most formidable rival, but actually usurping her place and privileges. Nor was it long before this place, on which she had set her heart first within the walls of the Port Royal Convent, was unassailably hers; and Madame de Mailly, in tears and sadness, saw an unbridgeable gulf widen between her and the man she undoubtedly had grown to love. That Félicité de Nesle had not over-estimated her powers of conquest was soon apparent. Louis became her abject slave, humouring her caprices and submitting to her will. And this will, let it be said to her credit, she exercised largely for his good. She weaned him from his vicious ways; she stimulated whatever good remained in him; she tried, and in a measure succeeded in making a man of him. Under her influence he began to realise that he was a King, and to play his exalted part more worthily. He asserted himself in a variety of directions, from looking personally after the ordering of his household to taking the reins of State into his own hands.