The enemies of Cardinal Fleury, all those in search of places, money, or credit, thought that a mistress would bring about the downfall of the old minister, so careful of the State funds. Ah! if the monarch yields, if he succumbs to temptation, the guilty ones will be the counsellors, the cynical, corrupt egotists, who persuade him to evil, who deify his caprices, who exalt his adulteries; they will be Richelieu, the official go-between; Voltaire, the laureate in prose and verse of the reign of the favorites; the women who entreat the Christian Sultan to throw them the handkerchief; the entire century, still more responsible and blameworthy than the King. V THE FAVOR OF THE COUNTESS DE MAILLY There are two kinds of royal favorites: the proud and the humble; those who make a boast of scandal and those who blush at it. The proud brag of their shame as if it were a victory; insatiable for money, credit, pleasures, they are intoxicated with the incense burned at their feet, and haughtily wave the sceptre of left-handed queens. The humble are less unreasonable; they voluntarily abase themselves; they try to gain pardon for a situation whose ignominy they comprehend, and though they have not sufficient moral sense to be willing to renounce the profits of their rôle, neither have they the impudence to make an imperious demand of homage and adulation. At the court of Louis XIV. Madame de Montespan was the type of the haughty mistress. The first mistress of Louis XV., the Countess de Mailly, must be classed among the humble ones.