they were now formally installed at Versailles. Louis XIV. often chatted
with Madame Scarron. She had bought the estate of Maintenon out of the
king's bounty. He made her take the title. The recollection of Scarron
was displeasing to him. "It is supposed that I am indebted for this
present to Madame de Montespan," she wrote to Madame de St. Geran; "I owe
it to my little prince. The king was amusing himself with him one day,
and, being pleased with the manner with which he answered his questions,
told him that he was a very sensible little fellow. 'I can't help
being,' said the child, 'I have by me a lady who is sense itself.'
'Go and tell her,' replied the king, 'that you will give her this evening
a hundred thousand francs for your sugar-plums.' The mother gets me into
trouble with the king, the son makes my peace with him; I am never for
two days together in the same situation, and I do not get accustomed to
this sort of life, I who thought I could make myself used to anything."
She often spoke of leaving the court. "As I tell you everything
honestly," she wrote in 1675 to her confessor, Abbe Gobelin, "I will not
tell you that it is to serve God that I should like to leave the place
where I am; I believe that I might work out my salvation here and
elsewhere, but I see nothing to forbid us from thinking of our repose,
and withdrawing from a position that vexes us every moment. I explained
myself badly if you understood me to mean that I am thinking of being a
nun; I am too old for a change of condition, and, according to the
property I shall have, I shall look out for securing one full of
tranquillity. In the world, all reaction is towards God; in a convent,
all reaction is towards the world; there is one great reason; that of age
comes next." She did not, however, leave the court except to take to the
waters the little Duke of Maine, who had become a cripple after a series
of violent convulsions. "Never was anything more agreeable than the
surprise which Madame de Maintenon gave the king," writes Madame de
Sdvigne to her daughter. "He had not expected the Duke of Maine till the