A powerful cabal was in fact got up against Monseigneur de Bourgogne.
Vaudeville, verses, atrocious songs against him, ran all over Paris and
the provinces with a licence and a rapidity that no one checked; while at
the Court, the libertines and the fashionables applauded; so that in six
days it was thought disgraceful to speak with any measure of this Prince,
even in his father's house.

Madame de Bourgogne could not witness all this uproar against her
husband, without feeling sensibly affected by it. She had been made
acquainted by Monseigneur de Bourgogne with the true state of the case.
She saw her own happiness and reputation at stake. Though very gentle,
and still more timid, the grandeur of the occasion raised her above
herself. She was cruelly wounded by the insults of Vendome to her
husband, and by all the atrocities and falsehoods his emissaries
published. She gained Madame de Maintenon, and the first result of this
step was, that the King censured Chamillart for not speaking of the
letters in circulation, and ordered him to write to Alberoni and D'Evreux
(Campistron, strangely enough, was forgotten), commanding them to keep
silence for the future.

The cabal was amazed to see Madame de Maintenon on the side of Madame de
Bourgogne, while M. du Maine (who was generally in accord with Madame de
Maintenon) was for M. de Vendome. They concluded that the King had been
led away, but that if they held firm, his partiality for M. de Vendome,
for M. du Maine, and for bastardy in general, would bring him round to
them. In point of fact, the King was led now one way, and now another,
with a leaning always towards M. de Vendome.

Soon after this, Chamillart, who was completely of the party of M. de