Page:Ten Years Later.djvu/306

294 "Monsieur de St. Aignan produced a most brilliant effect, and I am sure that more than one person who saw him dance this evening will not soon forget him. Do you not think so, La Valliere?"

"Why do you ask me? I did not see him, nor do I know him."

"What! you did not see Monsieur de St. Aignan? You do not know him?"

"No."

"Come, come, do not affect a virtue more extravagantly excessive than our fiertés; you have eyes, I suppose?"

"Excellent."

"Then you must have seen all those who danced this evening."

"Yes, nearly all."

"That is a very impertinent 'nearly all' for some."

"You must take it for what it is worth."

"Very well; now, among all those gentlemen whom you saw, which do you prefer?"

"Yes," said Montalais; "is it Monsieur de St. Aignan, or Monsieur de Guiche, or Monsieur "

"I prefer no one; I thought them all about the same."

"Do you mean, then, that among that brilliant assembly, the first court in the world, no one pleased you?"

"I do not say that."

"Tell us, then, who your ideal is."

"It is not an ideal being."

"He exists, then?"

"In very truth," exclaimed La Valliere, aroused and excited, "I cannot understand you at all. What! you who have a heart as I have, eyes as I have, and yet you speak of Monsieur de Guiche, of Monsieur de St. Aignan, when the king was there." These words, uttered in a precipitate manner, and in an agitated, fervid tone of voice, made her two companions, between whom she was seated, exclaim in a manner which terrified her "The king!"

La Valliere buried her face in her hands. "Yes," she murmured; "the king! the king! Have you ever seen any one to be compared to the king?"

"You were right just now in saying you had excellent eyes, Louise, for you see a great distance; too far, indeed. Alas! the king is not one upon whom our poor eyes have a right to be fixed."

"That is too true," cried La Valliere; "it is not the privilege of all eyes to gaze upon the sun; but I will look