Ninon was at first amazed at this strange reception and insolent behaviour of mistress and maid. But she was not left long in perplexity, since “Mademoiselle Balbien” permitted the truth to escape her prim lips, that Madame de Maintenon had credited Ninon with the design of introducing d’Aubigné into the boudoir in the middle of that memorable interview, with the intention of disgracing Madame in the estimation of the king. That Ninon was not made of the stuff for this, it is almost superfluous to say. Any sins she might have to answer for, did not include the hypocrisy with which Madame de Maintenon had clothed herself about, and almost equally needless is it to repeat that by no possible means the concealed presence of the king could have been known by any but the two most immediately concerned. It could be but a matter of their dual consciousness. For six years Madame Guyon remained in prison. Monsieur Fénelon’s _Maximes des Saints_ was condemned by the Court of Rome, and the bigotry and hypocrisy ruling Versailles swelled daily. Molière, alas! was no more, to expose the perilous absurdities and lash them to extinction; but the comedy of _La Fausse Prude_, produced some weeks later at the Italiens, was a prodigious success. The world greatly enjoyed and admired the fitting of the cap, built upon the framework supplied by one who had befriended and sheltered under her own roof the forlorn young orphan girl, Françoise d’Aubigné. CHAPTER XXV The Melancholy King—The Portents of the Storm—The Ambition of Madame Louis Quatorze—The Farrier of Provence—The Ghost in the Wood—Ninon’s Objection—The King’s Conscience—A Dreary Court—Racine’s Slip of the Tongue—The Passing of a Great Poet, and a Busy Pen Laid Down.