Part 35 (1/2)
Having learnt that they had neither terraces nor gardens at the grand monastery of the Rue Saint Antoine, his Majesty reeable house in the district of Belleville, and caused to be transported thither all kinds of orange-trees, rare shrubs, and flowers from Versailles These tasteful attentions, these filial cares, diverted the capital sos are easily received and naturalised without an effort
The Pare de la Chaise had his chariot with his arms on it, and his family livery; and as the income from his benefices remained to him, joined to his office of confessor, he continued to have every day a nu abbes, priests well on in years, barons, countesses, istrates and colonels, who caratulate themselves upon his convalescence, to ask of him, with submission and reverence, a bishopric, an archbishopric, a cardinal's hat, an i hters of one of my relatives, I went to see the noble confessor at his pavilion of Belleville He received me with the ratitude for all the benefits of the King
As he crossed his salon, in order to accompany me and escort me out, he let his white handkerchief fall; three bishops at once flung thele as to who should pick it up to give it back to hi what I had seen He said toupon hi could only throw his confessor into relief and add to his es--The Pavilions of the Garden of Flora--Rapid Triurace--Her Death
Madame de Maintenon was already forty-four years old, and appeared to be only thirty This freshness, that she owed either to painstaking care or to her happy and quite peculiar constitution, gave her that air of youth which fascinated the eyes of the courtiers and those of thethe conversation on this subject, which could not be diverting to her I began by putting the question generally, and I then named several of our superannuated beauties who still fluttered in the s the youth of butterflies
”There are butterflies of every age and colour in the gardens of Flora,”
said she, catching the ball on the rebound ”There are presumptuous ones, whoe and discolours; others, laer time For the rest, the latter seees And at botto proud?”
”Very little,” I answered her, ”since being dressed as a butterfly does not prevent one fro an insect, and the best sustained preservation lasts atentered I started speaking of a young person, extremely beautiful, who had just appeared at Court, and would eclipse, in my opinion, all who had shone there before her
”What do you call her?” asked his Majesty ”To what fa?”
”She comes froold Her parents desire to place her aes, and God has neverso beautiful”
As I said these words I watched the face of the Marquise She listened to this portrayal with attention, but without appearingher natural feeling The King only added these words:
”This young person needs be quite extraordinary, since Madame de Montespan praises her, and praises her with so much vivacity However, we shall see”
Two days afterwards, Maderand table The King, in spite of his composure, had looks and attentions for no one else
This excessive preoccupation struck the Queen, who, 's response, guessed the whole future of this encounter; and in her heart was al that iven to the King by her shaned love and passion for the h he had returned by enchantment to his twentieth year
As for hiet all dates I know that he was only now forty-one years old, and having been the finest es of a once striking beauty But his young conquest had hardly entered on her eighteenth year, and this difference could not fail to be plain to the , with a sort of anticipatory resignation, had for six or seven years greatly simplified his appearance We had seen him, little by little, reform that Spanish and chivalric costu pluer floated over his forehead, which had becoonal, scarf was suppressed, and the long boots, with gold and silver eer seen To please his new divinity, the ant stuffs becaarments; feathers reappeared He joined to theorical comedies, concerts on the waters recommenced Triumphant horse-races set the whole Court abob and in movement There was a fresh carousal; there was all that resembles the enthusiasms of youthful affection, and the deliriums of youth The youth alone was not there, at least in proportion, assort for twelve years, Madees had only to desire for a week She was created duchess at her debut; and the lozenge of her escutcheon was of a sudden adorned with a ducal coronet, and a peer's e; at least, I le word on it
The King came no less from time to time, to pay me a visit, and to talk toI endured his conversation with a philosophical phlege incould stop, had her knot of riband caught and held by a branch; the royal lover compelled the branch to restore the knot, and went and offered it to his A in intelligence, she carried herself this knot of riband to the top of her hair, and fixed it there with a long pin
Fortune willed it that this coiffure, without order or arrange was the first to congratulate her on it; all the courtiers applauded it, and this coiffure of the chase became the fashi+on of the day