Chapter 58 - Page 2

of cultivated intellect,
coquettish, loving in her nature, but rather from fancy, or imagination,
or ambition, than from her heart - Madame, we say, on the contrary,
inaugurated that epoch of light and fleeting amusements, which
distinguished the hundred and twenty years that intervened between the
middle of the seventeenth century, and the last quarter of the
eighteenth. Madame saw, therefore, or rather fancied she saw, things
under their true aspect; she knew that the king, her august brother-in-
law, had been the first to ridicule the humble La Valliere, and that, in
accordance with his usual custom, it was hardly probable he would ever
love the person who had excited his laughter, even had it been only for a
moment. Moreover, was not her vanity ever present, that evil influence
which plays so important a part in that comedy of dramatic incidents
called the life of a woman? Did not her vanity tell her, aloud, in a
subdued voice, in a whisper, in every variety of tone, that she could
not, in reality, she a princess, young, beautiful, and rich, be compared
to the poor La Valliere, as youthful as herself it is true, but far less
pretty, certainly, and utterly without money, protectors, or position?
And surprise need not be excited with respect to Madame; for it is known
that the greatest characters are those who flatter themselves the most in
the comparisons they draw between themselves and others, between others
and themselves. It may perhaps be asked what was Madame's motive for an
attack so skillfully conceived and executed. Why was there such a
display of forces, if it were not seriously her intention to dislodge the
king from a heart that had never been occupied before, in which he seemed
disposed to take refuge? Was there any necessity, then, for Madame to
attach so great an importance to La Valliere, if she did not fear her?
Yet Madame did not fear La Valliere in that direction in which an
historian, who knows everything, sees into the future, or rather, the
past. Madame was neither a prophetess nor a sibyl; nor could she, any
more than another, read what was written in that terrible and fatal book
of the future, which records in its most secret pages the most serious
events. No, Madame desired simply to punish the king for having availed
himself of secret means altogether feminine in their nature; she wished
to prove to him that if he made use of offensive weapons of that nature,
she, a woman of ready wit and high descent, would assuredly discover in
the arsenal of her imagination defensive weapons proof even against the
thrusts of a monarch. Moreover, she wished him to learn that, in a war
of that description, kings are held of no account, or, at all events,
that kings who fight on their own behalf, like