"You need not go far to rid yourself of me," cries Mademoiselle, incensed beyond bounds. "Leave me instantly, ungrateful man! You have sufficiently outraged me. In the presence too of my great ancestors," she adds, and with a stately action she extends her hand towards the portraits which hang around; "those ancestors, one of whose time-honoured titles I have given you. You might, I think, have chosen a more suitable spot for your insults," and she measures him from head to foot. Then with an imperious gesture she points to the door. Still they met, Mademoiselle still clung to Lauzun. In the month of September they are together at Choisy for a few days. Lauzun has enormous gambling debts and wants money, therefore he is come. On returning one evening from hunting he sees Mademoiselle seated under the shade of one of the fine old elms in the park, her favourite tree. She is in tears. It is nine o'clock at night, she has long awaited his return; now it is nearly dark. Lauzun gallops up to where she sits. He dismounts, gives his horse into the hands of a servant, and casts himself on the grass besides her. By so doing he splashes her dress with mud, but he offers no apology. He unfastens the heavy hunting boots he wears, and endeavours to draw them off, but he does not succeed. Then he turns suddenly round and thrusts them into her face. "Here, Louise d'Orléans," he says, "make yourself useful; take off my boots." Mademoiselle betrays no emotion, she only rises and returns to the house. They never met again. A brief record remained of her existence, graven on the tomb, where she lay, among "the daughters of France," unloved—unmourned; a sad example, that riches to a woman are too often a curse. The brief record is as follows:— "Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, eldest daughter of Gaston de France: Souveraine Princesse de Dombes, Princesse Dauphine d'Auvergne, Comtesse d'Eu, Duchesse de Montpensier; died 1693, aged sixty-six." CHAPTER XXX. FALL OF DE MONTESPAN. About this time Madame de Maintenon announced to the King that she had received a mission from Heaven to convert him from the error of his ways. "I was brought to Court miraculously for this purpose; God willed it," she writes to her daughter. Singularly enough, this conviction of her mission coincided with the absence of Madame de Montespan at the baths of Bourbon. Louis had come to view these temporary absences as a relief. He had grown somewhat weary of the once-adored Marquise. He inclined to think the society of Madame de Maintenon preferable. In her company the charms of friendship exceeded the delights of love. She was leading him up to Heaven by an easy path strewn with flowers. Conscious as he was of his past sins, he yet liked the process of repentance.