It all ended with these terrible words: 'I have told you already, madame; I will not be interfered with.'" Henceforth Madame de Montespan "interfered with" the king.

He gave the new dauphiness Madame de Maintenon as her mistress of the robes.

"I am told," writes Madame de Sevigne, "that the king's conversations do nothing but increase and improve, that they last from six to ten o'clock, that the daughter-in-law goes occasionally to pay them a shortish visit, that they are found each in a big chair, and that, when the visit is over, the talk is resumed.

The lady is no longer accosted without awe and respect, and the ministers pay her the court which the rest do.

No friend was ever so careful and attentive as the king is to her; she makes him acquainted with a perfectly new line of country--I mean the intercourse of friendship and conversation, without chicanery and without constraint; he appears to be charmed with it." Discreet and adroit as she was, and artificial without being false, Madame de Maintenon gloried in bringing back the king and the court to the ways of goodness.