"Ah, but this is a very different rival. This is no slip of a country girl, but the cleverest woman in France."
"Pshaw, Racine, you know our good master well, or you should, for you seem to have been at his elbow since the days of the Fronde. Is he a man, think you, to be amused forever by sermons, or to spend his days at the feet of a lady of that age, watching her at her tapestry-work, and fondling her poodle, when all the fairest faces and brightest eyes of France are as thick in his salons as the tulips in a Dutch flower-bed? No, no, it will be the Montespan, or if not she, some younger beauty."
"My dear Boileau, I say again that her sun is setting. Have you not heard the news?"
"Not a word."
"Her brother, Monsieur de Vivonne, has been refused the entre."
"Impossible!"
"But it is a fact."
"And when?"
"This very morning."
"From whom had you it?"