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Dark Suspicion. But Lewis is neither a modern historical polemicist, hastily herding his readers into a constricting corral of conclusions, nor a footnote plodder. He writes with an oldfashioned, speculative charm occasionally rising to eloquence, and ends by showing off a complex half-century as an English gentleman might show off a well-loved garden. Here is Louis objecting to Madame de Maintenon when she was first suggested as Maine's governess because "she was the sort of woman who read poetry, and the King, darkly but unjustly, suspected her of writing it." And Maine's lusty military friend, the Due de Vendóme, who invariably ate breakfast and directed his battles seated on a portable chaise percée. And the Due d'Orléans, the Regent who officially destroyed the power and prestige of Louis' bastards, also had Rabelais' work bound in a prayer book cover to avoid official boredom at unavoidable church services. Making his personages all human, Lewis somehow manages not to diminish them.