The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, vol 1 | Page 4

may wish to sample the author's ideas before making
an entire meal of them. D.W.]

MEMOIRS OF MADAME LA MARQUISE DE MONTESPAN
Written by Herself

Being the Historic Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV.

BOOK 1.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
Historians have, on the whole, dealt somewhat harshly with the
fascinating Madame de Montespan, perhaps taking their impressions
from the judgments, often narrow and malicious, of her contemporaries.
To help us to get a fairer estimate, her own "Memoirs," written by
herself, and now first given to readers in an English dress, should
surely serve. Avowedly compiled in a vague, desultory way, with no
particular regard to chronological sequence, these random recollections
should interest us, in the first place, as a piece of unconscious self-
portraiture. The cynical Court lady, whose beauty bewitched a great
King, and whose ruthless sarcasm made Duchesses quail, is here drawn
for us in vivid fashion by her own hand, and while concerned with
depicting other figures she really portrays her own. Certainly, in these
Memoirs she is generally content to keep herself in the background,
while giving us a faithful picture of the brilliant Court at which she was
for long the most lustrous ornament. It is only by stray touches, a
casual remark, a chance phrase, that we, as it were, gauge her
temperament in all its wiliness, its egoism, its love of supremacy, and
its shallow worldly wisdom. Yet it could have been no ordinary woman
that held the handsome Louis so long her captive. The fair Marquise
was more than a mere leader of wit and fashion. If she set the mode in
the shape of a petticoat, or devised the sumptuous splendours of a
garden fete, her talent was not merely devoted to things frivolous and
trivial. She had the proverbial 'esprit des Mortemart'. Armed with
beauty and sarcasm, she won a leading place for herself at Court, and
held it in the teeth of all detractors.
Her beauty was for the King, her sarcasm for his courtiers. Perhaps
little of this latter quality appears in the pages bequeathed to us, written,
as they are, in a somewhat cold, formal style, and we may assume that
her much-dreaded irony resided in her tongue rather than in her pen.
Yet we are glad to possess these pages, if only as a reliable record of
Court life during the brightest period of the reign of Louis Quatorze.
As we have hinted, they are more, indeed, than this. For if we look
closer we shall perceive, as in a glass, darkly, the contour of a subtle,

even a perplexing, personality.
P. E. P.

HISTORIC COURT MEMOIRS.
MADAME DE MONTESPAN.
CHAPTER I
.
The Reason for Writing These Memoirs.--Gabrielle d'Estrees.
The reign of the King who now so happily and so gloriously rules over
France will one day exercise the talent of the most skilful historians.
But these men of genius, deprived of the advantage of seeing the great
monarch whose portrait they fain would draw, will search everywhere
among the souvenirs of contemporaries and base their judgments upon
our testimony. It is this great consideration which has made me
determined to devote some of my hours of leisure to narrating, in these
accurate and truthful Memoirs, the events of which I myself am
witness.
Naturally enough, the position which I fill at the great theatre of the
Court has made me the object of much false admiration, and much real
satire. Many men who owed to me their elevation or their success have
defamed me; many women have belittled my position after vain efforts
to secure the King's regard. In what I now write, scant notice will be
taken of all such ingratitude. Before my establishment at Court I had
met with hypocrisy of this sort in the world; and a man must, indeed, be
reckless of expense who daily entertains at his board a score of insolent
detractors.
I have too much wit to be blind to the fact that I am not precisely in my
proper place. But, all things considered, I flatter myself that posterity
will let certain weighty circumstances tell in my favour. An
accomplished monarch, to greet whom the Queen of Sheba would have
come from the uttermost ends of the earth, has deemed me worthy of
his entertainment, and has found amusement in my society. He has told
me of the esteem which the French have for Gabrielle d'Estrees, and,
like that of Gabrielle, my heart has let itself be captured, not by a great
king, but by the most honest man of his realm.
To France, Gabrielle gave the Vendome, to-day our support. The

princes, my sons, give promise of virtues as excellent, and will be
worthy to aspire to destinies as noble. It is my desire