“But who told you it was on her account I asked you for the key?”
“For whom, then?”
“She does not lodge there alone, I suppose?”
“No, certainly; for Mademoiselle de La Vallière shares her rooms with her; but, really, you have nothing more to do with Mademoiselle de La Vallière than with Mademoiselle de Montalais, and there are only two men to whom I would give this key; to M. de Bragelonne, if he begged me to give it to him, and to the king, if he commanded me.”
“In that case, give me the key, Monsieur: I order you to do so,” said the king, advancing from the obscurity, and partially opening his cloak. “Mademoiselle de Montalais will step down to talk with you, while we go upstairs to Mademoiselle de La Vallière, for, in fact, it is she only whom we desire to see.”
“The king!” exclaimed Malicorne, bowing to the very ground.
“Yes, the king,” said Louis, smiling: “the king, who is as pleased with your resistance as with your capitulation. Rise, Monsieur, and render us the service we request of you.”
“I obey, Your Majesty,” said Malicorne, leading the way up the staircase.
“Get Mademoiselle de Montalais to come down,” said the king, “and do not breathe a word to her of my visit.”
Malicorne bowed in token of obedience, and proceeded up the staircase. But the king, after a hasty reflection, followed him, and that, too, with such rapidity, that, although Malicorne was already more than halfway up the staircase, the king reached the room at the same moment. He then observed, by the door which remained half-opened behind Malicorne, La Vallière, sitting in an armchair with her head thrown back, and in the opposite corner Montalais, who, in her dressing-gown, was standing before a looking-glass, engaged in arranging her hair, and parleying the while with Malicorne. The king hurriedly opened the door and entered the room. Montalais called out at the noise made by the opening of the door, and, recognizing the king, made her escape. La Vallière rose from her seat, like a dead person galvanized, and then fell back in her armchair. The king advanced slowly towards her.
“You wished for an audience, I believe,” he said coldly. “I am ready to hear you. Speak.”
Saint-Aignan, faithful to his character of being deaf, blind, and dumb, had stationed himself in a corner of the door, upon a stool which by chance he found there. Concealed by the tapestry which covered the doorway, and leaning his back against the wall, he could thus listen without being seen; resigning himself to the post of a good watchdog, who patiently waits and watches without ever getting in his master’s way.
La Vallière, terror-stricken at the king’s irritated aspect, rose a second time, and assuming a posture full of humility and entreaty, murmured, “Forgive me, sire.”
“What need is there for my forgiveness?” asked Louis.
“Sire, I have been guilty of a great fault; nay, more than a great fault, a great crime.”
“You?”
“Sire, I have offended Your Majesty.”
“Not in the slightest degree in the world,” replied Louis XIV.
“I implore you, sire, not to maintain towards me that terrible seriousness of manner which reveals Your Majesty’s just anger. I feel I have offended you, sire; but I wish to explain to you how it was that I have not offended you of my own accord.”
“In the first place,” said the king, “in what way can you possibly have offended me? I cannot perceive how. Surely not on account of a young girl’s harmless and very innocent jest? You turned the credulity of a young man into ridicule—it was very natural to do so: any other woman in your place would have done the same.”
“Oh! Your Majesty overwhelms me by your remark.”
“Why so?”
“Because, if I had been the author of the jest, it would not have been innocent.”
“Well, is that all you had to say to me in soliciting an audience?” said the king, as though about to turn away.
Thereupon La Vallière, in an abrupt and a broken voice, her eyes dried up by the fire of her tears, made a step towards the king, and said, “Did Your Majesty hear everything?”
“Everything, what?”
“Everything I said beneath the royal oak.”
“I did not lose a syllable.”
“And now, after Your Majesty really heard all, are you able to think I abused your credibility?”
“Credulity; yes, indeed, you have selected the very word.”
“And Your Majesty did not suppose that a poor girl like myself might possibly be compelled to submit to the will of others?”
“Forgive me,” returned the king; “but I shall never be able to understand that she, who of her own free will could express herself so unreservedly beneath the royal oak, would allow herself to be influenced to such an extent by the direction of others.”
“But the threat held out against me, sire.”
“Threat! who threatened you—who dared to threaten you?”
“Those who have the right to do so, sire.”
“I do not recognize anyone as possessing the right to threaten the humblest of my subjects.”
“Forgive me, sire, but near Your Majesty, even, there are persons sufficiently high in position to have, or to believe that they possess, the right of injuring a young girl, without fortune, and possessing only her reputation.”
“In what way injure her?”
“In depriving her of her reputation, by disgracefully expelling her from the court.”
“Oh! Mademoiselle de La Vallière,” said the king bitterly, “I prefer those persons who exculpate themselves without incriminating others.”
“Sire!”
“Yes; and I confess that I greatly regret to perceive, that an easy justification, as your own would have been, is now complicated in my presence by a tissue of reproaches and imputations against others.”
“And which you do not believe?” exclaimed La Vallière. The king remained silent.
“Nay, but tell me!” repeated La
