From this moment La Vallière's fate is sealed. Long she had loved and admired the King in secret; but until she learnt how warmly he returned this feeling she was scarcely aware how completely he had enthralled her. The ecstasy this certainty gave her first fully revealed to her the real danger of her situation. Poor Louise! Is it wonderful that, as the scene of this first and passionate declaration, she should love the old Château of Saint-Germain more than any other spot in the world?—that when suffering, the air restored her? when unhappy (and she lived to be so unhappy), the sight of the forest, of the terrace, revived her by tender reminiscences of the past? When the secret of Louis's attachment to La Vallière transpired (which, after the scene in the forest was very speedily), nothing could exceed the indignation of the whole circle, who each conceived that they had some especial cause of complaint. Louis's old love, the Comtesse de Soissons (Mancini), with the thirst for practical revenge bred in her hot Italian blood, held council with De Vardes and De Guiche, how to crush her, whom she styled "the common enemy." A letter was planned and written by the Countess in Spanish, addressed to the Queen, purporting to come from the King of Spain. This letter detailed every particular of her husband's _liaison_ with La Vallière. The bad spelling and foreign idioms, however, betrayed it to be a forgery. The letter was placed on the Queen's bed by the Comtesse de Soissons herself. Instead of falling into the Queen's hands, as was intended, it was found by De Molena, Maria Theresa's Spanish nurse. She carried it straight to the King. He traced it to Madame de Soissons. She was banished. Madame Henriette d'Orléans was more noisy and abusive than any one. Her vanity was hurt. Her feelings were outraged at the notion that the King, heretofore her admirer, should forsake her openly for one of her own women! It was too insulting. "What!" cried she in her rage, "prefer an ugly, limping _fillette_ to _me_, the daughter of a king? I am as superior in beauty to that little minx as I am in birth! _Dieu! qu'il manque de goût et de délicatesse!_" Without even taking leave of Louis she shut herself up at Saint-Cloud, where she made the very walls ring with her complaints. The poor, quiet little Queen, the only really injured person, wept and mourned in private. She was far too much afraid of that living Jupiter Tonans, her husband, to venture on any personal reproaches. She consoled herself by soundly abusing La Vallière in epithets much more expressive than polite. In this abuse she was joined by Anne of Austria, who, in her present austere frame of mind, was the last person in France to spare La Vallière. An explanation was decidedly needful. CHAPTER XVII. THE CONVENT OF CHAILLOT.