When the Court returns to Saint-Germain (now, can one fancy romance within those dingy walls?—but so it was), Louis is desperately, head and ears over, in love. A party of pleasure is arranged to take place in the forest under a tent formed of boughs, tapestry, and flowers. The ladies invited to this sylvan retreat are habited as shepherdesses and peasants. They form charming groups, like Sèvres china. On their arrival the most delicious music is heard from the recesses of the leafy woods, which as it plays at intervals, now here, now there, among the trees, is the signal for the appearance of various groups of satyrs, fauns, and dryads, who after dancing grotesque figure-dances, and singing verses in honour of the King, disappear, to be quickly replaced by another _troupe_. These present flowers, and also sing and dance as no dryads or fauns had ever dreamed of in classic bowers, but in a style quite peculiar to the age and taste of _le Grand Monarque_, who liked even nature itself to appear as artificial and formal as he was himself. This agreeable fête has lasted all day, and the company is about to return, when, conceive the alarm—a violent storm comes on, thunder rolls, the sky is suddenly overcast, and a heavy rain, enough to drench the whole Court to the skin, descends with remorseless violence. How every one scuds hither and thither! The thickest trees are eagerly seized on as a slight protection against the storm. Others hide themselves in the bushes, some penetrate deeper into the cover of the copse wood. Spite of the rain, and the destruction of the dresses, the ladies come to vote it rather an agreeable incident on the whole, when they find their favourite cavaliers beside them, placed, perchance, somewhat nearer than would have been _comme il faut_ in the Court circle. For although the ladies might really at first have been a little terrified, the gentlemen are certainly not likely to be troubled with any nervousness on account of a thunderstorm, and preserve sufficient _sang-froid_ each to select his lady-love in order to protect her from the weather. Thus it chanced that Madame Henriette finds herself under the care of the Comte de Guiche; the fair Mancini, once beloved by the King, now Comtesse de Soissons, is under the protection of her dear De Vardes; and Mademoiselle d'Orléans—_la Grande Mademoiselle_—is completely happy, and forgets the thunder, rain, and, more wonderful still, her own dignity, at finding herself escorted by Lauzun!