The consent of the king to the marriage of Lauzun and the Grande Mademoiselle having been at last wrung from him, Lauzun grew insufferable. His pride was boundless. Except to the king, he would not even doff his hat. He occupied himself exclusively in arranging the details of the festivities and ceremonial of the marriage. But his enemies were at work. His folly and vanity had created a host of them, and among them were the powerful Louvois, and the vindictive and ambitious favourite, Madame de Montespan, whom he had frequently grossly insulted; while Louvois found himself constantly thwarted and provoked by him. Madame de Montespan, thinking over the matter of Mademoiselle’s marriage, decided that her vast property would be much better disposed among the eight children she had brought the king, than in the pockets of Lauzun, and finding a supporter in Louvois, she represented the case to His Majesty, the result being that he withdrew his consent to the marriage, and de Lauzun was lodged in the Bastille, his character blackened—no such difficult matter—by the two. The friends of the lovers had warned them of the imminent possibility of this; and it was believed that they accepted the advice, and contrived to be privately married. De Lauzun vented his wrath for the promise—this time so undisputedly broken—by denouncing Madame de Montespan for her wifely unfaithfulness to her husband; but it did not hinder his imprisonment, which he spent for five years in the fortress of Pignerol, that dreary stronghold of deportation for offending, blue-blooded courtiers. He was conducted thither by Monsieur d’Artagnan, lieutenant of the Guards. Five years’ further incarceration after this in Pignerol was allotted him; though on conditions slightly ameliorated. The treatment had first been hard in the extreme, and had rigidly condemned him to one cell. Sympathy extended only to the disconsolate Mademoiselle, the victim of an ambitious coxcomb, and of a venal, faithless woman. Attention was, however, soon turned entirely from this affair, by the terrible and sudden death of Henrietta, the Duchesse d’Orléans of England—daughter of King Charles I.—the amiable and universally beloved wife of the king’s brother, the Duc d’Orléans. She was one evening enjoying the cool air on the great balcony of the palace of St Cloud, in company with her ladies, and requested one of them to fetch her a glass of chicory water from her apothecary. The apothecary arrived in a few moments with an enamelled goblet containing the drink, which he presented to her. Scarcely had she drunk it, than she was seized with violent convulsive agony, and cried out that she was poisoned. They carried her to the nearest bedchamber, and laying her down, loosened her clothes, and administered all the usual restoratives; but in vain. Already her face and limbs were livid and distorted. “I am poisoned—I have drunk poison!” was all she was able to utter.