"Madame, madame!"
"Not a word!"
"I am innocent of everything your majesty can suppose. Oh! madame! you are a witness of my despair. I love, I respect your majesty so much!"
"It would be far better not to respect me at all," said the queen, with a chilling irony of manner. "It would be far better if you were not innocent. Do you presume to suppose that I should be satisfied simply to leave you unpunished if you had committed the fault?"
"Oh, madame! you are killing me."
"No acting, if you please, or I will undertake the dénouement of the comedy; leave the room; return to your own apartment, and I trust my lesson may be of service to you."
"Madame!" said La Valliere to the Duchesse d'Orleans, whose hands she seized in her own, "do you, who are so good, intercede for me."
"I!" replied the latter, with an insulting joy, "I—good!—Ah, mademoiselle, you think nothing of the kind;" and with a rude, hasty gesture, she repulsed the young girl's hand.
La Valliere, instead of giving way, as from her extreme pallor and from her tears the two princesses might possibly have expected, suddenly resumed her calm and dignified air; she bowed profoundly, and left the room.
"Well!" said Anne of Austria to madame, "do you think she will begin again?"