“Oh! I don’t know where.”
“In the king’s apartment, perhaps?”
“Of course, if it were in the king’s apartment, I should tell you, I suppose.”
“In whose room, then?”
“I have told you for the last hour that I know nothing of the whole affair.”
“But the painter, then? the portrait—”
“It seems that the king wished to have the portrait of one of the ladies belonging to the court.”
“La Valliere?”
“Why, you seem to have only that name in your mouth. Who spoke to you of La Valliere?”
“If it be not her portrait, then, why do you suppose it would concern me?”