“On the contrary, sire. His Royal Highness, the Duke of Orléans, was always exceedingly kind towards M. de Saint-Remy, my stepfather. The services rendered were humble, and, properly speaking, our services have been adequately recognized. It is not everyone who is happy enough to find opportunities of serving his sovereign with distinction. I have no doubt at all, that, if ever opportunities had been met with, my family’s actions would have been as lofty as their loyalty was firm: but that happiness was never ours.”
“In that case, Mademoiselle de La Vallière, it belongs to kings to repair the want of opportunity, and most delightedly do I undertake to repair, in your instance, and with the least possible delay, the wrongs of fortune towards you.”
“Nay, sire,” cried La Vallière, eagerly; “leave things, I beg, as they are now.”
“Is it possible! you refuse what I ought, and what I wish to do for you?”
“All I desired has been granted me, when the honor was conferred upon me of forming one of Madame’s household.”
“But if you refuse for yourself, at least accept for your family.”
“Your generous intentions, sire, bewilder me and make me apprehensive, for, in doing for my family what your kindness urges you to do, Your Majesty will raise up enemies for us, and enemies for yourself, too. Leave me in the ranks of middle life, sire; of all the feelings and sentiments I experience, leave me to enjoy the pleasing instinct of disinterestedness.”
“The sentiments you express,” said the king, “are indeed admirable.”
“Quite true,” murmured Aramis in Fouquet’s ear, “and he cannot be accustomed to them.”
“But,” replied Fouquet, “suppose she were to make a similar reply to my letter.”
“True!” said Aramis, “let us not anticipate, but wait the conclusion.”
“And then, dear Monsieur d’Herblay,” added the superintendent, hardly able to appreciate the sentiments which La Vallière had just expressed, “it is very often sound calculation to seem disinterested with monarchs.”
“Exactly what I was thinking this very minute,” said Aramis. “Let us listen.”
The king approached nearer to La Vallière, and as the rain dripped more and more through the foliage of the oak, he held his hat over the head of the young girl, who raised her beautiful blue eyes towards the royal hat which sheltered her, and shook her head, sighing deeply as she did so.
“What melancholy thought,” said the king, “can possibly reach your heart when I place mine as a rampart before it?”
“I will tell you, sire. I had already once before broached this question, which is so difficult for a young girl of my age to discuss, but Your Majesty imposed silence on me. Your Majesty belongs not to yourself alone: you are married; and every sentiment which would separate Your Majesty from the queen, in leading you to take notice of me, will be a source of profoundest sorrow for the queen.” The king endeavored to interrupt the young girl, but she continued with a suppliant gesture. “The Queen Maria, with an attachment which can be well understood, follows with her eyes every step of Your Majesty which separates you from her. Happy enough in having had her fate united to your own, she weepingly implores Heaven to preserve you to her, and is jealous of the faintest throb of your heart bestowed elsewhere.” The king again seemed anxious to speak, but again did La Vallière venture to prevent him.—“Would it not, therefore, be a most blamable action,” she continued, “if Your Majesty, a witness of this anxious and disinterested affection, gave the queen any cause for jealousy? Forgive me, sire, for the expressions I have used. I well know it is impossible, or rather that it would be impossible, that the greatest queen of the whole world could be jealous of a poor girl like myself. But though a queen, she is still a woman, and her heart, like that of the rest of her sex, cannot close itself against the suspicions which such as are evilly disposed, insinuate. For Heaven’s sake, sire, think no more of me; I am unworthy of your regard.”
“Do you not know that in speaking as you have done, you change my esteem for you into the profoundest admiration?”
“Sire, you assume my words to be contrary to the truth; you suppose me to be better than I really am, and attach a greater merit to me than God ever intended should be the case. Spare me, sire; for, did I not know that Your Majesty was the most generous man in your kingdom, I should believe you were jesting.”
“You do not, I know, fear such a thing; I am quite sure of that,” exclaimed Louis.
“I shall be obliged to believe it, if Your Majesty continues to hold such language towards me.”
“I am most unhappy, then,” said the king, in a tone of regret which was not assumed; “I am the unhappiest prince in the Christian world, since I am powerless to induce belief in my words, in one whom I love the best in the wide world, and who almost breaks my heart by refusing to credit my regard for her.”
“Oh, sire!” said La Vallière, gently putting the king aside, who had approached nearer to her, “I think the storm has passed away now, and the rain has ceased.” At the very moment, however, as the poor girl, fleeing as it were from her own heart, which doubtless throbbed but too well in unison with the king’s, uttered these words, the storm undertook to contradict her. A dead-white flash of lightning illumined the forest with a weird glare, and a peal of thunder, like a discharge of artillery, burst over their heads, as if the height of the oak that sheltered them had attracted the storm. The young girl could not repress a cry of terror. The king with one hand drew her towards his heart, and stretched the other above her head, as though
