Philosophical Dictionary (Vol. 2)

Maintenon. The basis was true; the author had some letters from that lady, which a person raised at Saint-Cyr had shared with him. This small amount of truth was drowned in a seven-volume novel.

It is there that the author depicts Louis XIV supplanted by one of his valets; it is there that he invents letters from Mademoiselle Mancini, later Constable Colonna, to Louis XIV. It is there that he makes this niece of Cardinal Mazarin say, in a letter to the king: "You obey a priest; you are not worthy of me if you love to serve. I love you like my eyes, but I love your glory even more." Certainly, the author did not have the original of this letter.

"Mademoiselle de La Vallière (he says in another place) had thrown herself onto an armchair in light deshabille; there she thought at leisure of her lover. Often the day found her still sitting in a chair, leaning on a table, her eyes fixed, her soul attached to the same object in the ecstasy of love. Solely occupied with the king, perhaps she was complaining at that moment of the vigilance of Henriette’s spies and the severity of the Queen Mother. A slight noise pulls her from her reverie; she recoils with surprise and fright. Louis falls at her knees. She wants to flee; he stops her: she threatens; he appeases her: she weeps; he wipes away her tears."

Such a description would not even be accepted today in the most insipid of those novels that are barely made for chambermaids.

After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, one finds a chapter titled State of the Heart. But at these ridi-