Saint-Aignan, delighted with what he had just heard, and rejoiced at what the future foreshadowed for him, bent his steps toward De Guiche's two rooms. He who, a quarter of an hour previously, would not have yielded up his own rooms for a million of francs, was now ready to expend a million, if it were necessary, upon the acquisition of the two happy rooms he coveted so eagerly. But he did not meet with so many obstacles. M. de Guiche did not yet know whereabouts he was to lodge, and, besides, was still far too suffering to trouble himself about his lodgings; and so Saint-Aignan obtained De Guiche's two rooms without difficulty. As for M. Dangeau, he was so immeasurably delighted that he did not even give himself the trouble to think whether Saint-Aignan had any particular reason for removing. Within an hour after Saint-Aignan's new resolution, he was in possession of the two rooms; and ten minutes later Malicorne entered, followed by the upholsterers. During this time, the king asked for Saint-Aignan: the valet ran to his late apartments and found M. Dangeau there; Dangeau sent him on to De Guiche's, and Saint-Aignan was found there; but a little delay had of course taken place, and the king had already exhibited once or twice evident signs of impatience, when Saint-Aignan entered his royal master's presence, quite out of breath. "You, too, abandon me, then," said Louis XIV., in a similar tone of lamentation to that with which Caesar, eighteen hundred years previously, had used the _tu quoque_. "Sire, I am very far from abandoning you; for, on the contrary, I am busily occupied in changing my lodgings." "What do you mean? I thought you had finished moving three days ago." "Yes, sire; but I don't find myself comfortable where I am, and so I am going to change to the opposite side of the building." "Was I not right when I said you were abandoning me!" exclaimed the king. "Oh! this exceeds all endurance! But so it is. There was only one woman for whom my heart cared at all, and all my family is leagued together to tear her from me; and my friend, to whom I confided my distress, and who helped me to bear up under it, has become wearied of my complaints, and is going to leave me without even asking my permission." Saint-Aignan began to laugh. The king at once guessed there must be some mystery in this want of respect. "What is it?" cried the king, full of hope. "This, sire, that the friend whom the king calumniates is going to try if he cannot restore to his sovereign the happiness he has lost." "Are you going to let me see La Valliere?" said Louis XIV. "I cannot say so, positively, but I hope so." "How--how?--tell me that, Saint-Aignan. I wish to know what your project is, and to help you with all my power." "Sire," replied Saint-Aignan, "I cannot, even myself, tell very well how I must set about attaining success; but I have every reason to believe that from to-morrow--"