Carried as well as might be to the gatekeeper’s lodge and seated in his turn in the big armchair, “Sir,” said he to the chevalier, “you are certainly a nobleman. You have rendered me a great service, but you can render me a still greater one. Here is a message from the King for Madame la Marquise, and this message is very urgent, as you see, since my horse and I, in order to go faster, almost broke our necks. You understand that, wounded as I am, with a lame leg, I could not deliver this paper. I should have, in order to do so, to be carried myself. Will you go there in my stead?” At the same time he drew from his pocket a large envelope ornamented with gilt arabesques and fastened with the royal seal. “Very willingly, sir,” replied the chevalier, taking the envelope. And, nimble and light as a feather, he set out at a run and on the tips of his toes. V When the chevalier arrived at the château he found another doorkeeper in front of the peristyle: “By the King’s order,” said the young man, who this time no longer feared halberds, and, showing his letter, he passed gaily between half a dozen lackeys. A tall usher, planted in the middle of the vestibule, seeing the order and the royal seal, gravely inclined himself, like a poplar bent by the wind--then, smiling, he touched with one of his bony fingers the corner of a piece of paneling. A little swinging door, masked by tapestry, at once opened as if of its own accord. The bony man made an obsequious sign, the chevalier entered, and the tapestry, which had been drawn apart, fell softly behind him. A silent valet introduced him into a drawing-room, then into a corridor, in which there were two or three closed doors, then at last into a second drawing-room, and begged him to wait a moment. “Am I here again in the château of Versailles?” the chevalier asked himself. “Are we going to begin another game of hide-and-seek?” Trianon was, at that time, neither what it is now nor what it had been. It has been said that Madame de Maintenon had made of Versailles an oratory, and Madame de Pompadour a boudoir. It has also been said of Trianon that _ce petit château de porcelaine_ was the boudoir of Madame de Montespan. Be that as it may, concerning these boudoirs, it appears that Louis XV put them everywhere. This or that gallery, which his ancestor walked majestically, was then divided oddly into an infinity of apartments. There were some of every color, and the King went fluttering about in all these gardens of silk and velvet. “Do you think my little furnished apartments are in good taste?” he one day asked the beautiful Comtesse de Sérrant. “No,” said she, “I would have them in blue.” As blue was the King’s color, this answer flattered him. At their next meeting, Madame de Sérrant found the salon upholstered in blue, as she had wished it.