“Of hopes! My God! am I mad, or what is he?”
“Should I have dared to ask you for the midnight interviews which you granted me?”
The queen uttered a cry of rage, as she fancied she heard a sigh from the boudoir.
“Should I,” continued M. de Rohan, “have dared to come into the park if you had not sent Madame de la Motte for me?”
“Mon Dieu!”
“Should I have dared to steal the key? Should I have ventured to ask for this rose, which since then I have worn here on my heart, and burned up with my kisses? Should I have dared to kiss your hands? And, above all, should I have dared even to dream of sweet but perfidious love.”
“Monsieur!” cried she, “you blaspheme.”
“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed the cardinal, “heaven knows that to be loved by this deceitful woman I would have given my all, my liberty, my life.”
“M. de Rohan, if you wish to preserve either, you will confess immediately that you invented all these horrors; that you did not come to the park at night.”
“I did come,” he replied.