fortunes of favorites. No one could tell what a day might bring forth.
The woman of one hour might go the next. Self-interest stimulated the
ambitious seekers of favors to constant endeavor. Grim, determined
strugglers for social preference frequented the salons with smiling
faces that sometimes glowed with pride and satisfaction, but more often
veiled rankling disappointment and carking care.

Even the great Madame de Maintenon, who successfully weathered the
storms of the social struggle for so many years, once exclaimed: "I can
hold out no longer. I wish that I were dead." And a short time before
her demise, she observed bitterly, "One atones in full for youthful
joys and gratification. I can see, as I review my life, that since I
was twenty-two years of age--when my good fortune began--I have not
been free from suffering for a moment; and through my life my
sufferings increased."

If Madame de Maintenon confessed so much in her last days, what must
the other favorites of Versailles have experienced and felt? Each wore
the mask of Comedy, with Tragedy gnawing beneath. These brilliant
women, who seemed at times to be so happy, were little more than
slaves, and we find them disclosed in the memoirs of the time as
"penitents who make their apologies to history and lay bare to future
generations their miseries, vexations and the remorse of their souls."
The demands of Court life were constant and relentlessly exacting. The
favorites, each one striving to outdo the others, knew not, from day to
day, what way their destinies were leading them.

"If," exclaimed Saint-Amand, "among these favorites of the King, there
were a single one that had enjoyed her shameful triumphs in peace, that
could have recalled herself happy in the midst of her luxury and