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 get a fairer estimate, her own Memoirs
written by herself should surely serve. 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 who held the handsome Louis so long her captive. The fair
Marquise was more than a mere leader of wit and fashion. Armed with
beauty and sarcasm, she won a leading place for herself at Court,
and held it in the teeth of all detractors. In these pages we
possess a reliable record of Court life during the brightest period
of the reign of Louis XIV.
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