The full significance of it all now dawned upon Ninon. Had Mademoiselle not been his wife, it would be a comparatively simple matter to compel a revocation of the gifts which the princess had made him in the course of her life, in order that these should enrich the children of de Montespan. No consideration was yielded to the fact that, be Lauzun what he might, the gifts had been tokens of Mademoiselle’s affection for him. Ninon preferred complete inability to afford any trustworthy sort of information on this head, and suggested applying for it to Madame de Fiesque, who might be better instructed: “but,” continued Ninon, “supposing Mademoiselle was not his wife, surely to publish the fact, would create a scandal which His Majesty would consider paying too dear a price for the estates of Auvergne and St Fargeau. Either she was Lauzun’s wedded wife or—” Here the chronicle goes on to relate: Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ words were interrupted by a tremendous disturbance at the door, occasioned by an altercation with the guards, of some person endeavouring to force his way in. The voice was d’Aubigné’s, and the next instant he reeled in, far gone in a state of intoxication, and staggering to his sister, he gripped her by the arm and thrust her back into the chair from which she had risen. This chronicle goes on to relate a terrible scene, over which, for the honour of human nature, some kind of veil may be allowed to hang, lest veracious history has been embroidered by the ample material fact has afforded. The family differences of private domestic relations are frequently unedifying; but when it comes to the base humiliating of a great monarch, one in whose very vices and mistakes grace and virtue had been apparent, until the widow Scarron crossed his path, pen may well refrain from detail, and explain only that the intruder, d’Aubigné, had burst in upon his sister, to reproach her for her treachery in the matter of inducing him to enter St Sulpice. Taking advantage of the absence of his mentor and _alter ego_, Santeuil, she had contrived to trap him by false promises and misrepresentation into the hated place. His liberty for one thing, and of all things prized by d’Aubigné, would not, she had said, be curtailed; it had, however, been so entirely denied him, that when he had attempted to leave, he had been unceremoniously “clapped,” as he phrased it, “into a cellar,” and he had only escaped by wriggling through an air-grating. To any one possessed of the faintest sense of humour, the notion of making a monk of any sort of this wild harum-scarum would have seemed too preposterous; but the sense, always so lacking in Françoise d’Aubigné, allowed her to indulge in only too many absurdities whose ending was disastrous; and in any case, the notion of removing the incommoding one from the taverns and cafés and other public resorts where he freely gave utterance to his estimate of Madame Louis Quatorze, and notably of her newly acquired