"Alas! mademoiselle," said the king, after a moment's pause, "the liberty and freedom of the country is soon about to cease; your attendance on Madame will be more strictly enforced, and we shall see each other no more."
"Your majesty is too much attached to Madame," replied Louise, "not to come and see her very frequently; and whenever your majesty may chance to pass across the apartments"
"Ah!" said the king, in a tender voice, which was gradually lowered in its tone, "to perceive is not to see, and yet it seems that it would be quite sufficient for you."
Louise did not answer a syllable; a sigh filled her heart almost to bursting, but she stifled it.
"You exercise a great control over yourself," said the king to Louise, who smiled upon him with a melancholy expression. "Exert the strength you have in loving fondly," he continued, "and I will bless Heaven for having bestowed it on you."
La Valliere still remained silent, but raised her eyes, brimful of affection, toward the king. Louis, as if overcome by this burning glance, passed his hand across his forehead, and pressing the sides of his horse with his knees, made him bound several paces forward. La Valliere, leaning back in her carriage, with her eyes half closed, gazed fixedly upon the king, whose plumes were floating in the air; she could not but admire his graceful carriage, his delicate and nervous limbs which pressed his horse's sides, and the regular outline of his features, which his beautiful curling hair set off to great advantage, revealing occasionally his small and wellformed ear. In fact the poor girl was in love, and she reveled in her innocent affection. In a few moments the king was again by her side.
"Do you not perceive," he said, "how terribly your silence affects me? Oh! mademoiselle, how pitilessly inexorable you would become if you were ever to resolve to break off all acquaintance with any one; and then, too, I think you changeable; in factin fact, I dread this deep affection which fills my whole being."
"Oh! sire, you are mistaken," said La Valliere; "if ever I love, it will be for all my life."
"If you love, you say," exclaimed the king; "you do not love now, then?"
She hid her face in her hands.
"You see," said the king, "that I am right in accusing you; you must admit you are changeable, capricious, a coquette, perhaps."
"Oh, no! sire, be perfectly satisfied as to that. No, I say again; no, no!"
"Promise me, then, that to me you will always be the same."
"Oh! always, sire."
"That you will never show any of that severity which would break my heart, none of that fickleness of manner which would be worse than death to me."
"Oh! no, no."
"Very well, then! but listen. I like promises, I like to place under the guarantee of an oath, under the protection of Heaven, in fact, everything which interests my heart and my affections. Promise me, or rather swear to me, that if in the life we are about to commence, a life which will be full of sacrifice, mystery, anxiety, disappointment, and misunderstanding; swear to me that if we should in any way deceive, or misunderstand each other, or should judge each other unjustly, for that indeed would be criminal in love such as ours; swear to me, Louise"
She trembled with agitation to the very depths of her heart; it was the first time she had heard her name pronounced in that manner by her royal lover. As for the king, taking off his glove, and placing his hand within the carriage, he continued:"Swear, that never in all our quarrels will we allow one night even to pass by, if any misunderstanding should arise between us, without a visit, or at least a message, from either, in order to convey consolation and repose to the other."
She trembled with agitation to the very depths of her heart; it was the first time she had heard her name pronounced in that manner by her royal lover. As for the king, taking off his glove, and placing his hand within the carriage, he continued:"Swear, that never in all our quarrels will we allow one night even to pass by, if any misunderstanding should arise between us, without a visit, or at least a message, from either, in order to convey consolation and repose to the other."
La Valliere took her lover's burning hand between her own cool palms, and pressed it softly, until a movement of the horse, frightened by the proximity of the wheels, obliged her to abandon her happiness. She had vowed as he desired.
"Return, sire," she said, "return to the queen. I foresee a storm yonder, which threatens my peace of mind and yours."
Louis obeyed, saluted Mademoiselle de Montalais, and set off at a gallop to rejoin the queen. As he passed Monsieur's carriage, he observed that he was fast asleep, although Madame, on her part, was wide awake. As the king passed her she said, "What a beautiful horse, sire! Is it not Monsieur's bay horse?"
The young queen kindly asked, "Are you better now, sire?" [3]
[3] In the fivevolume edition, Volume 3 ends here.
Chapter XXIII.
Triumfeminate.
On the king's arrival in Paris, he sat at the council which had been summoned, and worked for a certain portion of the day. The queen remained with the queenmother, and burst into tears as soon as she had taken leave of the king. "Ah, madame!" she said, "the king no longer loves me! What will become of me?"
"A husband always loves his wife when she is like you," replied Anne of Austria.
"A time may come when he will love another woman instead of me."
"What do you call loving?"
"Always thinking of a personalways seeking her society."
"Do you happen to have remarked," said Anne of Austria, "that the king has ever done anything of the sort?"
"No, madame," said the young queen, hesitatingly.
"What is there to complain of, then, Marie?"
"You will admit that the king leaves me?"
"The king, my daughter, belongs to his people."
"And that is the very reason why he no longer belongs to me; and that is the reason, too, why I shall find myself, as so many queens before me, forsaken and forgotten, whilst glory and honors will be reserved for others. Oh, my mother! the king is so handsome! how often will others tell him that they love him, and how much, indeed, they must do so!"
"It is very seldom, indeed, that women love the man in loving the king. But if such a thing happened, which I doubt, you would do better to wish, Marie, that such women should really love your husband. In the first place, the devoted love of a mistress is a rapid element of the dissolution of a lover's affection; and then, by dint of loving, the mistress loses all influence over her lover, whose power of wealth she does not covet, caring only for his affection. Wish, therefore, that the king should love but lightly, and that his mistress should love with all her heart."
"Oh, my mother, what power may not a deep affection exercise over him!"
"And yet you say you are resigned?"
"Quite true, quite true; I speak absurdly. There is a feeling of anguish, however, which I can never control."
"And that is?"
"The king may make a happy choicemay find a home, with all the tender influences of home, not far from that we can offer him,a home with children round him, the children of another woman. Oh, madame! I should die if I were but to see the king's children."
"Marie, Marie," replied the queenmother with a smile, and she took the young queen's hand in her own, "remember what I am going to say, and let it always be a consolation to you: the king cannot have a Dauphin without you."
With this remark the queenmother quitted her daughterinlaw, in order to meet Madame, whose arrival in the grand cabinet had just been announced by one of the pages. Madame had scarcely taken time to change her dress. Her face revealed her agitation, which betrayed a plan, the execution of which occupied, while the result disturbed, her mind.
"I came to ascertain," she said, "if your majesties are suffering any fatigue from our journey."
"None at all," said the queenmother.
"A little," replied Maria Theresa.
"I have suffered from annoyance more than anything else," said Madame.
"How was that?" inquired Anne of Austria.
"The fatigue the king undergoes in riding about on horseback."
"That does the king good."
"And it was I who advised him," said Maria Theresa, turning pale.
Madame said not a word in reply; but one of those smiles which were peculiarly her own flitted for a moment across her lips, without passing over the rest of her face; then, immediately changing the conversation, she continued, "We shall find Paris precisely the Paris we quitted; the same intrigues, plots, and flirtations going on."
"Intrigues! What intrigues do you allude to?" inquired the queenmother.
"People are talking a good deal about M. Fouquet and Madame PlessisBelliere."
"Who makes up the number to about ten thousand," replied the queenmother. "But what are the plots you speak of?"
"We have, it seems, certain misunderstandings with Holland to settle."
"What about?"
"Monsieur has been telling me the story of the medals."
"Oh!" exclaimed the young queen, "you mean those medals struck in Holland, on which a cloud is seen passing across the sun, which is the king's device. You are wrong in calling that a plotit is an insult."
"But so contemptible that the king can well despise it," replied the queenmother. "Well, what are the flirtations which are alluded to? Do you mean that of Madame d'Olonne?"
"No, no; nearer ourselves than that."
"Casa de usted," murmured the queenmother, and without moving her lips, in her daughterinlaw's ear, without being overheard by Madame, who thus continued:"You know the terrible news?" [4]
"Oh, yes; M. de Guiche's wound."
"And you attribute it, I suppose, as every one else does, to an accident which happened to him while hunting?"
"Yes, of course," said both the queens together, their interest awakened.
Madame drew closer to them, as she said, in a low tone of voice, "It was a duel."
"Ah!" said Anne of Austria, in a severe tone; for, in her ears, the word "duel," which had been forbidden in France all the time she reigned over it, had a strange sound.
"A most deplorable duel, which has nearly cost Monsieur two of his best friends, and the king two of his best servants."
"What was the cause of the duel?" inquired the young queen, animated by a secret instinct.
"Flirtation," repeated Madame, triumphantly. "The gentlemen in question were conversing about the virtue of a particular lady belonging to the court. One of them thought that Pallas was a very secondrate person compared to her; the other pretended that the lady in question was an imitation of Venus alluring Mars; and thereupon the two gentlemen fought as fiercely as Hector and Achilles."