appreciate.”
No grace, no youth, no beauty, could stand out against such
a presentation. The king smiled. Whether the words of Madame
were a pleasantry, or uttered in all innocency, they proved
the pitiless immolation of everything that Louis had found
charming or poetic in the young girl. Mademoiselle de la
Valliere, for Madame and, by rebound, for the king, was, for
a moment, no more than the daughter of a man of a superior
talent over dindes truffees.
But princes are thus constituted. The gods, too, were just
like this in Olympus. Diana and Venus, no doubt, abused the
beautiful Alcmena and poor Io, when they condescended, for
distraction’s sake, to speak, amidst nectar and ambrosia, of
mortal beauties, at the table of Jupiter.
Fortunately, Louise was so bent in her reverential salute,
that she did not catch either Madame’s words or the king’s
smile. In fact, if the poor child, who had so much good
taste as alone to have chosen to dress herself in white
amidst all her companions — if that dove’s heart, so easily
accessible to painful emotions, had been touched by the
cruel words of Madame, or the egotistical cold smile of the
king, it would have annihilated her.
And Montalais herself, the girl of ingenious ideas, would
not have attempted to recall her to life; for ridicule kills
beauty even.
Page 48
Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later
But fortunately, as we have said, Louise, whose ears were
buzzing, and her eyes veiled by timidity, — Louise saw
nothing and heard nothing; and the king, who had still his
attention directed to the conversation of the cardinal and
his uncle, hastened to return to them.
He came up just at the moment Mazarin terminated by saying:
“Mary, as well as her sisters, has just set off for Brouage.
I make them follow the opposite bank of the Loire to that
along which we have traveled; and if I calculate their
progress correctly, according to the orders I have given,
they will to-morrow be opposite Blois.”
These words were pronounced with that tact — that measure,
that distinctness of tone, of intention, and reach — which
made del Signor Giulio Mazarini the first comedian in the
world.
It resulted that they went straight to the heart of Louis
XIV., and the cardinal, on turning round at the simple noise
of the approaching footsteps of his majesty, saw the
immediate effect of them upon the countenance of his pupil,
an effect betrayed to the keen eyes of his eminence by a
slight increase of color. But what was the ventilation of
such a secret to him whose craft had for twenty years
deceived all the diplomatists of Europe?
From the moment the young king heard these last words, he
appeared as if he had received a poisoned arrow in his
heart. He could not remain quiet in a place, but cast around
an uncertain, dead, and aimless look over the assembly. He
with his eyes interrogated his mother more than twenty
times: but she, given up to the pleasure of conversing with
her sister-in-law, and likewise constrained by the glance of
Mazarin, did not appear to comprehend any of the
supplications conveyed by the looks of her son.
From this moment, music, lights, flowers, beauties, all
became odious and insipid to Louis XIV. After he had a
hundred times bitten his lips, stretched his legs and his
arms like a well-brought-up child who, without daring to
gape, exhausts all the modes of evincing his weariness —
after having uselessly again implored his mother and the
minister, he turned a despairing look towards the door, that
is to say, towards liberty.
At this door, in the embrasure of which he was leaning, he
saw, standing out strongly, a figure with a brown and lofty
countenance, an aquiline nose, a stern but brilliant eye,
gray and long hair, a black mustache, the true type of
military beauty, whose gorget, more sparkling than a mirror,
broke all the reflected lights which concentrated upon it,
and sent them back as lightning. This officer wore his gray
hat with its long red plumes upon his head, a proof that he
was called there by his duty, and not by his pleasure. If he