By 1666, Madame de Montespan was trying to take the place of Louis XIV's current mistress, Louise de La Vallière. Using her wit and charm, she sought to ingratiate herself with the king. She also became close to the Dauphin, whose affection for her never wavered. Even though Louis XIV and Louise de La Vallière knew previously that Montespan was trying to conquer the King's heart, and he would laugh at her miserable efforts, the young mistress definitely underestimated her. Montespan became friends with Louise and Queen Maria Teresa, and when both she and Louise were pregnant, they requested that Madame de Montespan help them entertain the King during private dinners. Soon they regretted their decision, and she became the King's mistress in 1667. Shortly after, Louise's position was diminished to second place. To conceal his new relationship, he placed the ladies in connected rooms they had to share, so he could have access to both. Eventually, she was pushed to assist Madame de Montespan in her preparations for the King. Later, humiliated Louise joined a convent and the spotlight belonged now to the 25-year-old Madame de Montespan. The first of Madame de Montespan's seven children with the king was born in 1669. The newborn child, a girl, is thought to have been named Louise-Francoise. The upbringing of this first child (and subsequent children) was entrusted to one of Madame de Montespan's friend, Madame Scarron (the future marquise de Maintenon). A son, Louis-Auguste, was born in 1670. When the third child, Louis-César, was born in 1672, a house was purchased for Scarron and the children on the Rue Vaugirard. In 1673, the couple's three living illegitimate children were legitimated by Louis XIV and given the royal surname of de Bourbon. Their mother's name, however, was not mentioned in the legitimization documents, as Madame de Montespan was still married to her husband. If their maternal parentage had been revealed, the marquis could have legally claimed Madame de Montespan's illegitimate children with the king as his own. The eldest, a son, Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, became the duc du Maine; the second child, a son, Louis-César de Bourbon, became the comte de Vexin; and the third, a daughter, Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, became Mademoiselle de Nantes and in 1685 married the son of the head of the House of Condé, a cadet branch of the reigning House of Bourbon. As Madame de Montespan spent the majority of her time immersed in the social whirl of the court, the three had little contact with their busy mother and spent most of their childhood with their governess, Madame Scarron. In 1674, an official separation with her husband was declared by the Procureur général Achille de Harlay, assisted by six judges at the Châtelet. Due to her role in royal adultery, the Roman Catholic Church soon became her adversary. In 1675, the priest Lécuyer refused to give her absolution, which was necessary for her to take Easter communion, a requisite for all Catholics. The King appealed to the priest's superiors, but the Church refused to yield to the king's demands. After a short separation, the King and Madame de Montespan resumed their relationship, resulting in the birth of two more children, Françoise Marie de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Blois, in 1677, and Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, comte de Toulouse, in 1678. Both were to be legitimised in 1681. The Affaire des Poisons, which erupted in September 1677, was to be the beginning of the end of the reign of La Montespan. Suspicion that Madame de Montespan might be capable of murder or worse began when the King's eye strayed to another beauty, the Duchess of Fontanges. From the end of 1680 onwards, Louvois, Jean-Baptiste Colbert and Madame de Maintenon all helped to hush up the affair in order to prevent further scandal about the mother of the king's legitimised children. Even after the scandal had forced Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan apart, the king continued to visit her daily in her rooms at the palace[citation needed] Apparently her brilliance, charm, and spirited conversation mitigated to some extent her reduced status as a discarded mistress[citation needed] In 1691, no longer in royal favour, Madame de Montespan retired to the Filles de Saint-Joseph convent, in the rue Saint-Dominique in Paris, with a pension of half a million francs. In gratitude for her departure, the king made her father the governor of Paris and her brother, the duc de Vivonne, a marshal of France. Louis had previously made one of her sisters, Gabrielle, whose vows were only six years old, the abbess of the wealthy Fontevraud Abbey.