Madame de Montespan said, some time before her scandalous relations
with the King had fairly begun, "God preserve me from being the King's
mistress. If I were so I should feel ashamed to face the Queen." And
yet Madame de Montespan, within a short time, assumed the role of
favorite, and carried it out with great pride and arrogant assurance.
The conviction is forced upon us, however, by the evidence of those
that witnessed her ascendancy, that Montespan frequently felt the
stings of self-reproach when she met the Queen, and that her haughty
bearing concealed a genuine sense of shame. In the midst of luxury,
power and brilliant success she seemed at times a small and mean
character in the presence of the pious Marie Thérèse. As Louis'
infidelities increased in number, his sense of guilt toward his consort
was stamped deeper on his consciousness. He endeavored to make amends
by paying her marked respect and treating her at times with
distinguished tenderness and consideration. But Versailles was the
high seat of elaborate and elegant insincerity, and no one was deceived
by the formal courtesies paid by the Sun King to his unhappy wife. The
deference that he displayed toward her in public appeared to the eyes
of the world to be simply a cloak for essential neglect. And she, poor
creature, with all the prestige of the Queen of France, was but a
pitiful thing in the presence of the King. She tried to do her best to
please him. The thought of offense to the Monarch beset her with fear.
The Princess Palatine wrote of her once: "When the King came to her she
was so gay that people remarked it. She would laugh and twinkle and
rub her little hands. She had such a love for the King that she tried
to catch in his eyes every hint of the things that would give him
pleasure. If he ever looked at her kindly, that day was bright."
Madame De Caylus tells us that the Queen had such a dread of her royal
husband and such an inborn timidity that she hardly dared speak to him.
Madame de Maintenon relates that the King, having once sent for the