“He will not even hear you. You see Versailles in your dreams, and you will think yourself there when your postilion stops his horses at the city gates. Suppose you get as far as the ante-chamber--the gallery, the Oeil de Bœuf; perhaps there may be nothing between his Majesty and yourself but the thickness of a door; there will still be an abyss for you to cross. You will look about you, you will seek expedients, protection, and you will find nothing. We are relatives of M. de Chauvelin, and how do you think the King takes vengeance on such as we? The rack for Damiens, exile for the Parliament, but for us a word is enough, or, worse still--silence. Do you know what the silence of the King is, when, instead of replying to you, he mutely stares at you, as he passes, and annihilates you? After the Grève, and the Bastille, this is a degree of torture which, though less cruel in appearance, leaves its mark as plainly as the hand of the executioner. The condemned man, it is true, remains free, but he must no longer think of approaching woman or courtier, drawing-room, abbey, or barrack. As he moves about every door closes upon him, every one who is anybody turns away, and thus he walks this way and that, in an invisible prison.” “But I will so bestir myself in my prison that I shall get out of it.” “No more than any one else! The son of M. de Meynières was no more to blame than you. Like you, he had received promises, he entertained most legitimate hopes. His father, a devoted subject of his Majesty, an upright man if there is one in the kingdom, repulsed by his sovereign, bowed his gray head before the _grisette_, not in prayer, but in ardent pleading. Do you know what she replied? Here are her very words, which M. de Meynières sends me in a letter: ‘The King is the master, he does not deem it appropriate to signify his displeasure to you personally; he is content to make you aware of it by depriving your son of a calling. To punish you otherwise would be to begin an unpleasantness, and he wishes for none; we must respect his will. I pity you, however; I realize your troubles. I have been a mother; I know what it must cost you to leave your son without a profession!’ This is how the creature expresses herself; and you wish to put yourself at her feet!” “They say they are charming, sir.” “Of course they say so. She is not pretty, and the King does not love her, as every one knows. He yields, he bends before this woman. She _must_ have something else than that wooden head of hers to maintain her strange power.” “But they say she has so much wit.” “And no heart!--Much to her credit, no doubt.” “No heart! She who knows so well how to declaim the lines of Voltaire, how to sing the music of Rousseau! She who plays Alzire and Colette! No heart! Oh, that can not be! I will never believe it.”