having constructed and even bought this pretty pleasure-house.

"This must have cost treasures," said he. "Had you not parks and
chateaus enough? It would have been better to keep all these sums and
give them to me now."

After this exordium, he set himself to criticise the coiffure of the
Queen, on account of the coloured knots that he had remarked in it.

"But you mean, then, to satirise me personally," said the Princess to
him, "since you see my hair dressed in the same fashion, and I am older
than my cousin!

"What became of you on leaving the King?" she asked him. "I waited for
you till two hours after midnight."

"I went," said he, "to visit M. de Louvois, who is not my friend, and who
requires humouring; then to visit M. Colbert, who favours me."

"You ought to have seen Madame de Maintenon, I gave you that advice
before leaving you," she said; "it is to her, above all, that you owe
your liberty."

"But your Madame de Maintenon," he resumed, "is she, too, one of the
powers? Ah, my God! what a new geography since I left these regions ten
years ago!"

To avoid tete-a-tete, M. de Lauzun was always in a surly humour; he put
his left arm into a sling; he never ceased talking of his rheumatism and
his pains.