“Oh, no!” replied the young girl; “pray keep them yourself, sire; my house is far too small to accommodate such visitors.”
“In that case you shall have Hampton Court to put the cartoons in.”
“Be less generous, sire, and learn to love a little while longer, that is all I have to ask you.”
“I shall never cease to love you; is not that enough?”
“You are smiling, sire.”
“Do you wish me to weep?”
“No; but I should like to see you a little more melancholy.”
“Thank Heaven, I have been so long enough; fourteen years of exile, poverty, and misery, I think I may well regard it as a debt discharged; besides, melancholy makes people look so plain.”
“Far from that—for look at the young Frenchman.”
“What! the Vicomte de Bragelonne? are you smitten too? By Heaven, they will all grow mad over him one after the other; but he, on the contrary, has a reason for being melancholy.”