Avon Modern Short Story Monthly #36 — page 27: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HISTORICAL NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENT 27 Louise de la Valliére was a victim, and coveted the honours and the splendour by which that unfortunate favourite was surrounded. Not even her marriage with the Marquis de Montespan some three years after her coming to Court sufficed to overcome the long- ings born of her covetousness and ambition. And then, when the Sun-King looked with favour upon her opulent charms, whem at - last she saw the object of her ambition within reach, that husband of hers went very near to wrecking everything by his unreasonable behaviour. This preposterous marquis had the effrontery to dispute his wife with Jupiter, was so purblind as not to appreciate the honour the Sun-King proposed to do him. In putting it thus, I but make myself the mouthpiece_of the Court. When Montespan began to make trouble by railing furiously against the friendship of the King for.his wife, his behaviour so amazed the King’s cousin, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, that she called him “an extravagant and extraordinary man.’ To his face she told him that he must be mad to behave in this fashion; and so % incredibly distorted were his views, that he did not at all agree with ; her. He provoked scenes with the King, in which he quoted Scrip- ture, made ‘apposite allusions to King David which were in the very worst taste, and even ventured to suggest that the Sun-King ‘might have to reckon with the judgment of God. If he escaped a lettre de cachet and a dungeon in the Bastille, it can only have been because the King feared the further spread of a scandal injurious to the sacrosanctity of his royal dignity. The Marchioness fumed in private and sneered in public. When Mademoiselle de’ Montpensier suggested that for his safety’s sake she should control her husband’s antics, she expressed her bitterness. “He and my parrot,” she said, “amuse the Court to my shame.” In the end, finding that neither by upbraiding the King nor by beating his wife could he prevail, Monsieur de Montespan resigned himself after his own fashion. He went into widower’s mourning, dressed his servants. in black, and came ostentatiously to Court in-a mourning coach to take ceremonious leave of his friends. It was an affair that profoundly irritated the Sun-King, and very nearly made him ridiculous. Theréafter Montespan abandoned his wife to the King. He with: (ef 0) comicbooks