When they spoke vilely about "Queen Margot" I was seized by a convulsion of feeling which was not childish at all. My heart swelled with hatred for the backbiters. I was overcome by an irresistible desire to do harm to every one, to be insolent, and sometimes a flood of tormenting pity for myself and every one else swept over me. That dumb pity was more painful than hatred. I knew more about my queen than they did, and I was always afraid that they would find out what I knew. On Sundays, when my employers had gone to the cathedral for high mass, I used to go to her the first thing in the morning. She would call me into her bedroom, and I sat in a small arm-chair, upholstered in gold-colored silk, with the little girl on my knee, and told the mother about the books I had read. She lay in a wide bed, with her cheek resting on her small hands, which were clasped together. Her body was hidden under a counterpane, gold in color, like everything else in the bedroom; her dark hair lay in a plait over her swarthy shoulder and her breast, and sometimes fell over the side of the bed till it touched the floor. As she listened to me she looked into my face with her soft eyes and a hardly perceptible smile and said: "That's right." Even her kind smile was, in my eyes, the condescending smile of a queen. She spoke in a deep, tender voice, and it seemed to me that it said always: "I know that I am immeasurably above all other people; no one of them is necessary to me." Sometimes I found her before her mirror, sitting in a low chair and doing her hair, the ends of which lay on her knees, over the arms, and back of the chair, and fell almost to the floor. Her hair was as long and thick as grandmother's. She put on her stockings in my presence, but her clean nudity aroused in me no feeling of shame. I had only a joyful feeling of pride in her. A flowerlike smell always came from her, protecting her from any evil thoughts concerning her. I felt sure that the love of the kitchen and the pantry was unknown to Queen Margot. She knew something different, a higher joy, a different kind of love. But one day, late in the afternoon, on going into her drawing-room, I heard from the bedroom the ringing laugh of the lady of my heart. A masculine voice said: "Wait a minute! Good Lord! I can't believe--" I ought to have gone away. I knew that, but I could not. "Who is that?" she asked. "You? Come in!"