Near the King, yet still at some distance from him, were many members of his family and Court, including the Queen, who sat before a second fire farther down the room in the riding-dress in which she had that day accompanied her husband to a wild stag hunt in the forest. A little distance off, chattering, laughing--in discreetly subdued tones--were women who bore, or were yet to bear, names that the world will never forget. One there was, who, although already a recipient of the favours of Le Roi Soleil if not as yet of his love, sat plainly dressed and with her eyes demurely cast down, near to Madame de Montespan--_mâitresse en titre_--and only raised those eyes at some sallies from the children of the latter who played around her knees. After which she would let them steal swiftly towards the face of the ruler of France's destiny as well as of the destiny of half Europe. Yet, sometimes, too, she would smile softly at some thought not aroused by the children's gambols, when her lips would part and disclose her teeth which were already giving signs of the decay that, later, was to take entire possession of them. When this occurred, those near her would wonder what the woman who, as Françoise d'Aubigne, had been born in a prison, was thinking of. Perhaps, they speculated to themselves, on the jokes and gibes of her dead husband, the diseased and crippled poet, romancer and dramatist, Paul Scarron. Or, perhaps, on the lovers she had so often run to meet (when she was supposed to be at mass or confession) in the little, green-hung _parloir_ lent her by Ninon de l'Enclos for her rendezvous: perhaps of the manner in which, slowly but surely, she was spinning her web around the King and enfolding him in it even as the spider spins its web and enfolds and strangles the fly. Near her were, however, other women who, had they had their way, would themselves have strangled the life out of this woman, now, by creation and gift of estate and brevet, Madame de Maintenon, as willingly as she was secretly strangling the will and power out of Louis; women whom once the King had loved more fiercely than--though not so subserviently as--he was now beginning to love her. Close by _la femme funeste_ was the once lovely Duchesse de Châtillon--now grown fat and troubled with a nervous twitching of the face--who had once disputed with Madame de Beauvais, who had never been lovely and who squinted, the right of having been Louis' first love. Here, too, was the beautiful Mdlle. d'Argenson now married to a husband who was reported to beat her; and many others. While, had the phantoms of all those whom the King had adored and then neglected, and then cast off, been able to appear, the room would have been full of sombre shadows.