Fouquet learned from him, without believing it any the more, a still more audacious adventure. Lauzun had soon left the Bastille, and had recovered the King’s favour. Beloved by Mademoiselle, he obtained permission to marry her; but vanity again ruined him. Instead of hastening such an unhoped-for union, he wishes to wait, in order that sumptuous liveries may be made and that the marriage may be solemnly celebrated in the royal chapel, in presence of the whole court, “and as between crowned heads.”[420] He thus leaves the princes and Madame de Montespan time to act, and Louis XIV., yielding to their representations, withdraws the consent at first accorded. Lauzun, who with reason distrusted Madame de Montespan, despite the assurances of friendship she did not cease to give him, dared, in order to ascertain the truth, to conceive a most dangerous project.[421] Taking for his accomplice the waiting-woman of the powerful favourite, he slipped under the bed a little before the King’s arrival, and, a witness of their interview, he was able to convince himself that Madame de Montespan was the inveterate enemy to whose advice Louis XIV. had yielded. “A cough,” says Saint Simon, “the least sound, the slightest accident, might have discovered this rash being, and then what would have become of him? These are things the relation of which stifles and terrifies one at the same time.”[422] Fortunately, Lauzun was able to remain motionless. Meeting Madame de Montespan at the ballet, an hour after the interview, he asked her in an agreeable manner whether she had deigned to serve his cause with the King. She replied that, far from having failed to do so, she had taken pleasure, as ever, in extolling his services. Lauzun let her speak at length; then, suddenly, placing his mouth to her ear, he repeated to her, word for word, the conversation which she had just had with the King, and wound up by calling her “liar, hussy, and jade.” Madame de Montespan succeeded in mastering her confusion, but she never forgot this scene, and a year after, uniting with Louvois,[423] she had brought about the fall of the favourite and his despatch to Pignerol. Fouquet listened to the narrative of these adventures, which were only too real, as one reads an improbable romance. It was only much later that he was convinced by his relations and friends of the veracity of his companion in captivity. But during several years, not doubting his madness, he resigned himself to listen to him out of courtesy, not seeking occasions to see him, but carefully avoiding to contradict him; behaving, in short, toward him as one does towards an unfortunate being afflicted with a mild and harmless but obstinate mania.[424]