This was so chilly that he took it between both his to warm it, and with his other arm enclasping the soft and so beautiful body, he bent over to murmur some of the loving nonsense fitted for sleeping maids. His face was so close to hers that it touched it.
Gilbert felt in his pocket for a knife with a long blade which he used in pruning trees.
The face was as cold as the hand, which made the royal lover rise; his eyes wandered to the Cinderella foot, which he took hold of—it was as cold as the hand and the cheek. He shuddered for all seemed a marble statue.
Gilbert gritted his teeth and opened the knife, as he beheld so much beauty and regarded the royal threat as a robbery intended on him.
But the King dropped the foot as he had the hand. Surprised at the sleep which he had thought to be feigned in prudery by a coquet, he prepared to learn the nature of this insensibility.
Gilbert crept half way out of the doorway, with set teeth, glittering eye and the knife bared in his grip to stab the King.
Suddenly a frightful flash of lightning lit up Andrea’s face with a vivid glare of violet and sulphur light while the thunder made every article of furniture dance in the room. Frightened by her pallor, immobility and silence, Louis XV. recoiled, muttering:
“Truly the girl is dead!”
The idea of having wooed a corpse sent a shudder through his veins. He took up the candle and looked at Andrea by its flickering flame. Seeing the brown-circled eyes, the violet lips, the disheveled tresses, the throat which no breath raised, he uttered a shriek, let the candlestick fall, and staggered out through the antechamber like a drunken man, knocking against the wainscotting in his alarm.
Knife still in hand, Gilbert came out of his covert. He advanced to the room door and for a space contemplated the lovely young maid still in the profound sleep.