The Refugees by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — Read

The rooms which were inhabited by the lady who had already taken so / marked a position at the court of France were as humble as were her / fortunes at the time when they were allotted to her, but with that rare / tact and self-restraint which were the leading features in her / remarkable character, she had made no change in her living with the / increase of her prosperity, and forbore from provoking envy and jealousy / by any display of wealth or of power. In a side wing of the palace, far / from the central _salons_, and only to be reached by long corridors and / stairs, were the two or three small chambers upon which the eyes, first / of the court, then of France, and finally of the world, were destined to / be turned. In such rooms had the destitute widow of the poet Scarron / been housed when she had first been brought to court by Madame de / Montespan as the governess of the royal children, and in such rooms she / still dwelt, now that she had added to her maiden Francoise d'Aubigny / the title of Marquise de Maintenon, with the pension and estate which / the king's favour had awarded her. Here it was that every day the king / would lounge, finding in the conversation of a clever and virtuous woman / a charm and a pleasure which none of the professed wits of his sparkling / court had ever been able to give to him, and here, too, the more / sagacious of the courtiers were beginning to understand, was the point, / formerly to be found in the magnificent _salons_ of De Montespan, whence / flowed those impulses and tendencies which were so eagerly studied, and / so keenly followed up by all who wished to keep the favour of the king.

It was a simple creed, that of the court. Were the king pious, then let / all turn to their missals and their rosaries. Were he rakish, then who / so rakish as his devoted followers? But woe to the man who was rakish / when he should be praying, or who pulled a long face when the king wore / a laughing one! And thus it was that keen eyes were ever fixed upon / him, and upon every influence that came near him, so that the wary / courtier, watching the first subtle signs of a coming change, might so / order his conduct as to seem to lead rather than to follow.