with harshness; Bussy-Rabutin wrote that he treated her with scorn. Thus began the expiatory martyrdom which lasted for twenty-seven years. On March 15, 1691, Madame de Montespan retired to Paris, going into the community of St. Joseph which she had founded. Louis granted her a right royal pension, 10,000 pistoles--£20,000 of to-day--a month; but when, in 1692, the double marriage of Madame de Montespan's children, Mademoiselle de Blois and the Duke de Maine, was celebrated with the Duke de Chartres and Mademoiselle de Charolais, Louis did not allow their mother to appear at the ceremony or to sign the contract. In the early days of her retirement Madame de Montespan had the greatest difficulty in accommodating herself to the calm monotony of her retreat at St. Joseph's. 'She aired her leisure and anxieties,' says Saint-Simon, 'at Bourbon, at Fontevrault, at her estate at Antin, and for years was quite unable to regain repose of mind.' What were these anxieties? Saint-Simon could not explain them; but we are acquainted with them to-day. Madame de Montespan was much distressed at abandoning the glory of the world; but from the day when the renunciation was made, she threw herself with as much passion into penitence as she had displayed in ambition and love. 'From the moment of her retirement to St. Joseph's,' says Saint-Simon, 'till her death, her conversion never belied itself, and her penitence continually augmented.' She might have been seen then, in the Carmelite convent in the Rue du Faubourg St. Jacques, imploring from her old rival, whom she had so harshly persecuted--the gentle and saintly Louise de la Vallière, Sister Louise de la Miséricorde--the words which give ease of mind and forgetfulness of the past. Though she tenderly loved those of her children whom she had borne to Louis XIV, it was towards the Duke d'Antin, the son she had by the Marquis de Montespan, that she diverted her solicitude, from a sense of duty, and, as Saint-Simon tells us, 'she occupied herself with enriching him.' 'The king had no manner of dealings with her,' writes the great chronicler, 'even through their children. Their attentions were discouraged, they thenceforth saw her only rarely and after having asked permission. The Père de la Tour wrung from her a terrible act of penitence, namely, to beg her husband's pardon and place herself again in his hands. She wrote herself in the most submissive terms, offering to return to him if he would deign to receive her, or to repair to whatever place he pleased to command. To any one who knew Madame de Montespan, this was a sacrifice of the most heroic kind. She had all the merit of it without undergoing the experience. Monsieur de Montespan sent word that he would neither receive her nor lay any commands upon her, and that he never wished to hear her name mentioned for the rest of his life.'