"But for my sake."
"Sire, for your sake I would do anything in the world, except that."
"You will drive me to despair—you compel me to turn to the last resource of weak people, and seek counsel of my angry and wrathful disposition."
"I advise you to be reasonable."
"Reasonable! I can be so no longer."
"Nay, sire, I pray you—"
"For pity's sake, Henriette; it is the first time, I have entreated any one, and I have, no hope in any one but in you."
"Oh, sire, you are weeping!"
"From rage, from humiliation!—that I, the king, should have been obliged to descend to entreaty! I shall hate this moment during my whole life. You have made me suffer in one moment more distress and more degradation of feeling than I could have anticipated in the greatest extremity in life." And the king rose and gave free vent to his tears, which, in fact, were tears of anger and of shame.
Madame was not touched exactly—for the best women, when their pride is hurt, are without pity; but she was afraid that the tears the king was shedding might possibly carry away every soft and tender feeling in his heart. "Give what commands you please, sire," she said; "and since you prefer my humiliation to your own—although mine is public, and yours has been witnessed but by myself alone—speak, I will obey your majesty."