The doctor repeated that it was nothing dangerous, and left the chamber to prepare a powder. Madame fell on her side again; her sufferings were horrible. She opened her eyes from a swoon of anguish to see her husband holding back the bed curtains and looking down at her. She spoke, panting from the pillow. “Ah, Monsieur!–you have ceased to love me–a long while now–but I–I have never deceived you.” He turned away without a word. She lay now on her back exhausted; the curtains were drawn so that she was enclosed in her bed. Her sick eyes traced the pattern on the canopy above her; she heard her ladies whispering. She thought of de Guiche smuggled into her apartments under the guise of a fortune-teller, of his letters–three, four a day–when she was last sick; she thought of Marsillac, of de Vardes, of M. de Lorraine and of the King— She thought of the King’s brother, her husband, of how she had angered, flouted, wounded him, of how she had laughed at him. All at once she sat up and dragged the curtains apart. “Look to that water I drank,” she gasped. “I am poisoned!” As she spoke she saw that Monsieur was still in her chamber, and she seemed confused. “They mistook one bottle for another,” she said, and fell down again in the bed. A little tremor of horror ran through the ladies. Madame de la Fayette looked at Monsieur; he appeared neither startled nor terrified. “Give some of the chicory water to a dog,” he said, “and watch if it be poison or no.” But Mme de Gamaches said that the cup she had given to Madame had contained the last there was in the bottle. It was now half-past five; the doctor returned and gave Madame a glass of viper powders mixed with milk; as she dragged herself up to take it she noticed that the sun was still shining brightly through a chink in the curtains, and it shot across her agony; it was a strange thing that the sun glimmered still over the terraces, the rose-beds, the terraces of St. Cloud, and the broad river running from Paris. The loathsome mixture did her no good; she was smitten with a deadly sickness, and lay quite still, shivering. M. Vyelen felt her hands, icy cold, her feet as cold. “I am poisoned,” she said; “I am dying.” The room was crowded with people; many of them were weeping. The noise of it came heavily to her ears; her eyes were closed. She wondered why they should weep; nobody was there whom she had imagined fond of her; neither De Guiche, Marsillac, M. de Lorraine–her brother, De Vardes or–the King. And these? Would any of these care? She trusted none but the last. How far to Versailles? Why did they not send for him? The curtain was drawn again; this time Mme Desbordes. She declared that she had made the chicory water herself and had drunk of it. This to comfort Madame; it was not–as to the last–true. Madame persisted that she was poisoned. She sat up in bed; the tears lay in her eyes.