“What can I say?” murmured La Vallière. “Do you not see, sire, that I am completely overwhelmed at this moment; that I have no power of will, or thought, or speech?”
“Is it so difficult, then, to speak the truth? You could have told me the whole truth in fewer words than those in which you have expressed yourself.”
“But the truth about what, sire?”
“About everything.”
La Vallière was just on the point of revealing the truth to the king, her arms made a sudden movement as if they were about to open, but her lips remained silent, and her hands again fell listlessly by her side. The poor girl had not yet endured sufficient unhappiness to risk the necessary revelation. “I know nothing,” she stammered out.
“Oh!” exclaimed the king, “this is no longer mere coquetry, or caprice, it is treason.”
And this time nothing could restrain him. The impulse of his heart was not sufficient to induce him to turn back, and he darted out of the room with a gesture full of despair. Saint-Aignan followed him, wishing for nothing better than to quit the place.
Louis XIV did not pause until he reached the staircase, and grasping the balustrade, said: “You see how shamefully I have been duped.”
“How, sire?” inquired the favorite.
“De Guiche fought on the Vicomte de Bragelonne’s account, and this Bragelonne … oh! Saint-Aignan, she still loves him. I vow to you, Saint-Aignan, that if, in three days from now, there were to remain but an atom of affection for her in my heart, I should die from very shame.” And the king resumed his way to his own apartments.
“I told Your Majesty how it would be,” murmured Saint-Aignan, continuing to follow the king, and timidly glancing up at the different windows.
Unfortunately their return was not, like their arrival, unobserved. A curtain was suddenly drawn aside; Madame was behind it. She had seen the king leave the apartments of the maids of honor, and as soon as she observed that His Majesty had passed, she left her own apartments with hurried steps, and ran up the staircase that led to the room the king had just left.
165
Despair
As soon as the king was gone La Vallière raised herself from the ground, and stretched out her arms, as if to follow and detain him, but when, having violently closed the door, the sound of his retreating footsteps could be heard in the distance, she had hardly sufficient strength left to totter towards and fall at the foot of her crucifix. There she remained, brokenhearted, absorbed, and overwhelmed by her grief, forgetful and indifferent to everything but her profound sorrow;—a grief she only vaguely realized—as though by instinct. In the midst of this wild tumult of thoughts, La Vallière heard her door open again; she started, and turned round, thinking it was the king who had returned. She was deceived, however, for it was Madame who appeared at the door. What did she now care for Madame! Again she sank down, her head supported by her prie-dieu chair. It was Madame, agitated, angry, and threatening. But what was that to her? “Mademoiselle,” said the princess, standing before La Vallière, “this is very fine, I admit, to kneel and pray, and make a pretense of being religious; but however submissive you may be in your addresses to Heaven, it is desirable that you should pay some little attention to the wishes of those who reign and rule here below.”
La Vallière raised her head painfully in token of respect.
“Not long since,” continued Madame, “a certain recommendation was addressed to you, I believe.”
La Vallière’s fixed and wild gaze showed how complete her forgetfulness or ignorance was.
“The queen recommended you,” continued Madame, “to conduct yourself in such a manner that no one could be justified in spreading any reports about you.”
La Vallière darted an inquiring look towards her.
“I will not,” continued Madame, “allow my household, which is that of the first princess of the blood, to set an evil example to the court; you would be the cause of such an example. I beg you to understand, therefore, in the absence of any witness of your shame—for I do not wish to humiliate you—that you are from this moment at perfect liberty to leave, and that you can return to your mother at Blois.”
La Vallière could not sink lower, nor could she suffer more than she had already suffered. Her countenance did not even change, but she remained kneeling with her hands clasped, like the figure of the Magdalen.
“Did you hear me?” said Madame.
A shiver, which passed through her whole frame, was La Vallière’s only reply. And as the victim gave no other signs of life, Madame left the room. And then, her very respiration suspended, and her blood almost congealed, as it were, in her veins, La Vallière by degrees felt that the pulsation of her wrists, her neck, and temples, began to throb more and more painfully. These pulsations, as they gradually increased, soon changed into a species of brain fever, and in her temporary delirium she saw the figures of her friends contending with her enemies, floating before her vision. She heard, too, mingled together in her deafened ears, words of menace and words of fond affection; she seemed raised out of her existence as though it were upon the wings of a mighty tempest, and in the dim horizon of the path along which her delirium hurried her, she saw the stone which covered her tomb upraised, and the grim, appalling texture of eternal night revealed to her distracted gaze. But the horror of the dream which possessed her senses faded away, and she was again restored to the habitual resignation of her character. A ray of hope penetrated her heart, as a ray of sunlight streams into the dungeon of some unhappy captive. Her mind reverted to the journey from Fontainebleau, she saw the king
