beautiful."

As I said these words I watched the face of the Marquise. She listened
to this portrayal with attention, but without appearing moved by it, such
is her power of suppressing her natural feeling. The King only added
these words:

"This young person needs be quite extraordinary, since Madame de
Montespan praises her, and praises her with so much vivacity. However,
we shall see."

Two days afterwards, Mademoiselle de Fontanges was seen in the salon of
the grand table. The King, in spite of his composure, had looks and
attentions for no one else.

This excessive preoccupation struck the Queen, who, marking the
blandishments of the young coquette and the King's response, guessed the
whole future of this encounter; and in her heart was almost glad at it,
seeing that my turn had come.

Mademoiselle de Fontanges, given to the King by her shameless family,
feigned love and passion for the monarch, as though he had returned by
enchantment to his twentieth year.

As for him, he too appeared to us to forget all dates. I know that he
was only now forty-one years old, and having been the finest man in the
world, he could not but preserve agreeable vestiges of a once striking
beauty. But his young conquest had hardly entered on her eighteenth
year, and this difference could not fail to be plain to the most
inattentive, or most indulgent eyes.