Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction; France -- History -- Louis XIV, 1643-1715 -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Swordsmen -- Fiction
“When, suddenly,” continued the king, “Monsieur, who was listening,
heard the word ‘_banos_,’ which the queen pronounced with some degree
of bitterness, that awakened his attention; he entered the room, looking
quite wild, broke into the conversation, and began to quarrel with my
mother so bitterly that she was obliged to leave him; so that, while you
have a jealous husband to deal with, I shall have perpetually present
before me a specter of jealousy with swollen eyes, a cadaverous face,
and sinister looks.”
“Poor king,” murmured Madame, as she lightly touched the king’s hand.
He retained her hand in his, and in order to press it without exciting
suspicion in the spectators, who were not so much taken up with the
butterflies that they could not occupy themselves about other matters,
and who perceived clearly enough that there was some mystery in the
king’s and Madame’s conversation, Louis placed the dying butterfly
before his sister-in-law, and bent over it as if to count the thousand
eyes of its wings, or the particles of golden dust which covered it.
Neither of them spoke; however, their hair mingled, their breaths
united, and their hands feverishly throbbed in each other’s grasp. Five
minutes passed in this manner.
Chapter XXXVIII. What Was Caught after the Butterflies.
The two young people remained for a moment with their heads bent down,
bowed, as it were, beneath the double thought of the love which was
springing up in their hearts, and which gives birth to so many happy
fancies in the imaginations of twenty years of age. Henrietta gave
a side glance, from time to time, at the king. Hers was one of those
finely-organized natures capable of looking inwardly at itself, as well
as at others at the same moment. She perceived Love lying at the bottom
of Louis’s heart, as a skillful diver sees a pearl at the bottom of
the sea. She knew Louis was hesitating, if not in doubt, and that his
indolent or timid heart required aid and encouragement. “And so?” she
said, interrogatively, breaking the silence.
“What do you mean?” inquired Louis, after a moment’s pause.
“I mean, that I shall be obliged to return to the resolution I had
formed.”
“To what resolution?”
“To that which I have already submitted to your majesty.”
“When?”
“On the very day we had a certain explanation about Monsieur’s
jealousies.”
“What did you say to me then?” inquired Louis, with some anxiety.
“Do you not remember, sire?”
“Alas! if it be another cause of unhappiness, I shall recollect it soon
enough.”
“A cause of unhappiness for myself alone, sire,” replied Madame
Henrietta; “but as it is necessary, I must submit to it.”
“At least, tell me what it is,” said the king.
“Absence.”
“Still that unkind resolve?”
“Believe me, sire, I have not found it without a violent struggle with
myself; it is absolutely necessary I should return to England.”
“Never, never will I permit you to leave France,” exclaimed the king.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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