“What do you mean?”
“I mean that they are so far removed from the vulgar herd that they forget that others often stand in need of the bare necessities of life. They are like the inhabitant of the African mountains, who, gazing from the verdant tableland, refreshed by the rills of melted snow, cannot comprehend that the dwellers in the plains below are perishing from hunger and thirst in the midst of the desert, burnt up by the heat of the sun.”
The queen colored, for she now began to perceive the drift of her friend’s remark. “It was very wrong,” she said, “to have neglected you.”
“Oh! madame, I know the king has inherited the hatred his father bore me. The king would exile me if he knew I were in the Palais Royal.”
“I cannot say that the king is very well disposed towards you, duchesse,” replied the queen; “but I could—secretly, you know—”
The duchesse’s disdainful smile produced a feeling of uneasiness in the queen’s mind. “Duchesse,” she hastened to add, “you did perfectly right to come here, even were it only to give us the happiness of contradicting the report of your death.”
“Has it been rumored, then, that I was dead?”
“Everywhere.”
“And yet my children did not go into mourning.”
“Ah! you know, duchesse, the court is very frequently moving about from place to place; we see M. Albert de Luynes but seldom, and many things escape our minds in the midst of the preoccupations that constantly beset us.”