"Well, we shall see."

"And if you are wrong--"

"Well, what then?"

"Then it may be a little serious for you."

"And why?"

"The Marquise de Montespan has a memory."

"Her influence may soon be nothing more."

"Do not rely too much upon it, my friend. When the Fontanges came up
from Provence, with her blue eyes and her copper hair, it was in every
man's mouth that Montespan had had her day. Yet Fontanges is six feet
under a church crypt, and the marquise spent two hours with the king
last week. She has won once, and may again."

"Ah, but this is a very different rival. This is no slip of a country
girl, but the cleverest woman in France."

"Pshaw, Racine, you know our good master well, or you should, for you
seem to have been at his elbow since the days of the Fronde. Is he a
man, think you, to be amused forever by sermons, or to spend his days at
the feet of a lady of that age, watching her at her tapestry-work, and
fondling her poodle, when all the fairest faces and brightest eyes of
France are as thick in his _salons_ as the tulips in a Dutch flower-bed?
No, no, it will be the Montespan, or if not she, some younger beauty."