"Certainly I will," replied the young woman, "I have nothing to hide from you."
"Now look here, Charlotte," said the king, "explain to me just for once how it came about that after the desperate resistance which you made to me before my marriage, you became less cruel to me who am an awkward Béarnais, an absurd provincial, a prince too poverty-stricken, indeed, to keep the jewels of his crown polished."
"Henry," said Charlotte, "you are asking the explanation of the enigma which the philosophers of all countries have been trying to determine for the past three thousand years! Henry, never ask a woman why she loves you; be satisfied with asking, 'Do you love me?'"
"Do you love me, Charlotte?" asked Henry.
"I love you," replied Madame de Sauve, with a fascinating smile, dropping her pretty hand into her lover's.
Henry retained the hand.
"But," he went on to say, following out his thought, "supposing I have guessed the word which the philosophers have been vainly trying to find for three thousand years—at least as far as you are concerned, Charlotte?"
Madame de Sauve blushed.
"You love me," pursued Henry, "consequently I have nothing else to ask you and I consider myself the happiest man in the world. But you know happiness is always accompanied by some lack. Adam, in the midst of Eden, was not perfectly happy, and he bit into that miserable apple which imposed upon us all that love for novelty that makes every one spend his life in the search for something unknown. Tell me, my darling, in order to help me to find mine, didn't Queen Catharine at first bid you love me?"
"Henry," exclaimed Madame de Sauve, "speak lower when you speak of the queen mother!"