Meanwhile Bernard, left behind, had become voluble. He began to talk at large upon Marly, upon the glories of the gardens. He bored Desmarets most damnably, but Desmarets affected an equal eagerness, pretended surprise, put on a familiar astonishment at each new detail, and with slow, familiar steps took Bernard back to his sumptuous carriage at the gates. He held his smile well back as the banker was helped into the cushions by absurdly obsequious servants. He saw the splendid four horses stamp off down the big cobblestones of the yard. The man gone, Desmarets sat himself down frankly, without ceremony, upon a bench, as though to rest from a great strain. A courtier came up to him. He did not rise. The courtier said,-- “That’s all over!” But Desmarets answered,-- “There is much more in Bernard than one might think.... I like him.” Which was a lie. And a very few days later the Crown began its drain of nine millions upon Bernard. THE CHÂTEAU (_October 1759_) There is a great house which stood once in the woods of a small village some three miles from Versailles. It still stands, and woods about it. I know it well. It is built in the majestic and sober manner of its time--not quite two hundred years ago; airy, in great suites of rooms, with the windows lighting them from either side. The ground falls away from before it in a park with tall trees forming a sweep of descending lawn, and is faced by the enclosing hills, where the trees hide all but the summit of a long, arched aqueduct, which furnished the fountains of the king’s palace. The west illumines that slope at evening; the summer sun sets behind the arches of that old, high aqueduct on its ridges of the hills, and far away beyond, miles away, are the farther hills, which are the threshold of the Vexin; while to the right, to the northwards, lies mistedly the plain of the Seine. In this house, in the very heart of the eighteenth century, and in the crisis of its fate, Louis, the king of France, the fifteenth of that name, sat waiting by the fire; for it was autumn, and they had brought in chestnut logs from the woods and lit them. The coach stood outside the glass-roofed porch, having just brought its master--for he had come suddenly, capriciously, without warning, as was his habit in these last years--and the Pompadour was within. He sat there waiting for her, putting out his hands in a simple gesture towards the fire, unwatched, alone; his fine deep eyes were full of mood and reverie, and also of the beginnings of despair; but he had come for companionship.