Madame is described as a woman of very stately elegant figure and bearing. Possessed of infinite tact she never lost her temper even before de Montespan had been banished from Court. Nothing appeared to vex her, and she would smile past and through all obstacles until she obtained what she desired. With all, she would appear to have been an austere woman, caring little for dress or the pageants of the Court and much for power. In that, she bore a certain resemblance to Catherine de Medici. As time wore on, she so influenced the King that we find the red heels, diamond buckles, laces and plumes almost all gone. That she ever loved the man is doubtful, and she certainly did not forgive his dying reference to her age, which exceeded his by two years. Her last words as she deserted him, which he probably heard--and which she intended he should hear--were as heartless as only a woman of that stamp could make them,--"There lies a man who never loved any one but himself." [Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU OF MAINTENON. FROM THE NORTH By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] To the students of history, Maintenon and its seclusion would seem a place more to the liking of its austere mistress than Versailles, and it is probable that she spent much time in the château. It may be that here she induced Louis to sign that revocation of the Edict of Nantes which so affected the fortunes of our own land, by driving the best of the population of France down the Rhine valley and out on to the ocean. On our return to Paris we pass by St. Cyr, the immense collection of buildings which Louis built for Madame as a wedding gift and wherein she held court at the head of a convent of two hundred and fifty noble dames. The place is at present a military school and we are not permitted to enter, but there is after all nothing to see save the black marble slab which covers her tomb. To St. Cyr she came a day before the king died, leaving him to enter upon the great hereafter alone. Here she lived the simplest and most austere of lives and here she ended her days. A rushing ride through the afternoon brings us again to Paris, in the twilight and into the Élysées Palace Hôtel where at least two hundred of the gayest women of the under world are taking tea, and I am surprised to find the majority of them speaking English, many, by their accents, coming from our own country. It is a strange sight this; London has some such scenes, but I know of none in New York, to its credit be it said.[4] [4] In view of the present conditions in one of New York's greatest hotels, I must qualify that statement.--M. M. S. With the auto disappeared also, but into the subway I think, the youth with the spring suit and the orchid, both sadly drooping. I believe he got into a boiling bath and filled up on what whiskeys and sodas Paris had left, for twenty-four hours, resting the while at the bottom of a deep, deep bed. CHAPTER XXVI