The rooms which were inhabited by the lady who had already taken so marked a position at the court of France were as humble¹ as were her fortunes at the time when they were allotted² to her, but with that rare tact³ and self-restraint which were the leading features in her remarkable⁴ character, she had made no change in her living with the increase of her prosperity, and forbore from provoking envy and jealousy⁵ by any display of wealth or of power. In a side wing of the palace, far from the central salons⁶, and only to be reached by long corridors and stairs, were the two or three small chambers⁸ upon which the eyes, first of the court, then of France, and finally of the world, were destined⁹ to be turned. In such rooms had the destitute¹⁰ widow of the poet Scarron been housed when she had first been brought to court by Madame de Montespan as the governess of the royal children, and in such rooms she still dwelt, now that she had added to her maiden¹¹ Francoise d’Aubigny the title of Marquise de Maintenon, with the pension and estate which the king’s favour had awarded her. Here it was that every day the king would lounge, finding in the conversation of a clever and virtuous¹² woman a charm and a pleasure which none of the professed¹³ wits of his sparkling court had ever been able to give to him, and here, too, the more sagacious of the courtiers were beginning to understand, was the point,

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