Page:Ten Years Later.djvu/165

Rh who had not been born in those elevated regions termed a throne, and which, in spite of their elevation, are sheltered from similar vertigoes. From that very moment Louis XIV. acknowledged madame as a person who might be recognized, Buckingham regarded her as a coquette deserving the crudest tortures, and De Guiche looked upon her as a divinity; the courtiers as a star whose light might become the focus of all favor and power. And yet Louis XIV., a few years previously, had not even condescended to offer his hand to that "ugly girl" for a ballet; and yet Buckingham had worshiped this coquette in the humblest attitude; and yet De Guiche had looked upon this divinity as a mere woman; and yet the courtiers had not dared to extol that star in her upward progress, fearful to displease the monarch whom this star had formerly displeased.

Let us see what was taking place during this memorable evening at the king's card-table. The young queen, although Spanish by birth, and the niece of Anne of Austria, loved the king, and could not conceal her affection. She was a keen observer, like all women, and imperious, like every queen, was sensible of madame's power, and acquiesced in it immediately, a circumstance which induced the young queen to raise the siege and retire to her apartments. The king hardly paid any attention to her departure, notwithstanding the pretended symptoms of indisposition by which it was accompanied. Encouraged by the rules of etiquette, which he had begun to introduce at the court as an element of every position and relation of life, Louis XIV. did not disturb himself; he offered his hand to madame without looking at Monsieur his brother, and led the young princess to the door of her apartments. It was remarked that at the threshold of the door, his majesty, freed from every restraint, or less strong than the situation, sighed very deeply. The ladies present — for nothing escapes a woman's observation — Mlle. Montalais, for instance — did not fail to say to each other, "the king sighed," and "madame sighed, too." This had been indeed the case. Madame had sighed very noiselessly, but with an accompaniment very far more dangerous for the king's repose. Madame had sighed, first closing her beautiful black eyes, next opening them, and then, laden as they were with an indescribable mournfulness of expression, she had raised them toward the king, whose face at that moment had visibly heightened in color. The consequence of these blushes, of these interchanged sighs, and of this royal