Some sort of light broke in upon Ninon. Was she to be the ghost of Anne of Austria? Just that; but Ninon shook her head. It would be simply profanation. “Not in such a good cause,” smiled Madame Arnoul. “Not if it had the effect of terrifying the king into dismissing Madame de Montespan. It would be a most meritorious act, that.” Ninon’s heart rose. “But if we should be found out?” she said. “Trust me,” smiled Madame Arnoul, and in a few moments she was sleeping the sleep that only the innocent and travel-tired know, in the great terrible bed of the haunted chamber. At five o’clock in the morning there was a tap at the door. The steward had sent to inquire whether the night had been passed undisturbed. Madame Arnoul replied that nothing could have been more comfortable. The Court arrived next day, and Louis XIV., greatly fatigued with the long journey, retired to bed at nine o’clock. Then began the royal toilette of Ninon. It was a work of time, for Ninon’s figure called for considerable expansion, and her brown hair needed golden tints. These details achieved with consummate art, she donned the brocade gown and embroidered satins, and crowned the work with the _cordon bleu_. All being ready, Madame pressed the knob in the griffin’s throat. The panel fell apart, and the deceased queen, Anne of Austria, appeared in the king’s chamber. His Majesty was in a deep sleep, and Ninon glided majestically to the bedside, lighted by the brilliant but somewhat quivering brilliancy of a phosphorescent torch which Madame Arnoul waved through the open panel. Then Ninon laid her cold hand, half congealed by immersion for a length of time in iced water, upon the arm of Louis, and he awoke with a start, and sitting up, stared with haggard, terrified gaze at the apparition. “My mother!—my mother!” he gasped, in fear-suffocated tones. Laying her finger on her lips, Ninon placed on the table, beside the bed, a paper, and pointing down on it, with a terrible frown on her brows, she glided backwards till she reached the panel, where she was lost in the gloom of the night, as Madame Arnoul extinguished the torch. It was a hazardous game, and Ninon was half-dead with terror at its conclusion. Louis was, if possible, still more terrified; and as the two women stood listening in the Chamber of the Phantoms, they heard through the not quite closed panel the voice of their accomplice, Louis’s _valet-de-chambre_, inquiring in agitated tones what ailed him. The king could only articulate a command for a light, and by it he read the terrible warning against his courses of life, written by Madame Arnoul, who had feared that Louis would detect the fraud if Ninon had spoken her message. The forgery was perfect in its imitation of the queen’s handwriting, a piece of which Madame Arnoul had contrived to procure, and it ran as follows:—