When her household, trembling, spread the news that the dead priest had been found lying under the limes, slain by his own hand, and it reached Madame la Marquise in her private chambers, she was startled, shocked, wept, hiding her radiant eyes in her broidered handkerchief, and called Azor, and bade him bring her her flask of scented waters, and bathed her eyes, and turned them dazzling bright on Saint-Elix, and stirred her chocolate and asked the news. "_On peut être êmue aux larmes et aimer le chocolat_," thought Madame la Marquise, with her friend Montespan;--while, without, under the waving shadow of the linden-boughs, with the sunlight streaming round him, the little dog nestling in his breast, refusing to be comforted, lay the man whom she had murdered. The portrait of Mignard still hangs on the walls of the château, and in its radiant colors Madame la Marquise still lives, fair type of her age, smiling her victorious smile, with the diamonds shining among her hair, and her brilliant eyes flashing defiance, irony, and coquetry as of yore, when she reigned amidst the beauties of Versailles;--and in the gardens beyond in the summer nights, the lime-boughs softly shake their fragrant flowers on the turf, and the moonlight falls in hushed and mournful calm, streaming through the network of the boughs on to the tangled mass of violets and ferns that has grown up in rank luxuriance over the spot where Gaston de Launay died. * * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES Obvious punctuation errors have been repaired. A few obvious errors in original printing have also been repaired: Page 82, first paragraph: "out of the Cara di Fiori" corrected to "out of the Casa di Fiori". Page 145, last paragraph: "Lady Hautton has just" corrected to "Lady Hautton had just". Page 167, 4th paragraph: "anything put a pleasant" corrected to "anything but a pleasant". Page 167, last paragraph: "nor even when he went that" corrected to "nor even when he went on that". Page 173, 4th paragraph: et C^{ie} is an abbreviation for the French word "compagnie". Page 224, last paragraph: "Helvetius" corrected to "Helvétius". Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.