"What have I done, then? The king came to my room to see the children taught. He stayed. He talked. He asked my opinion on this and that. Could I be silent? or could I say other than what I thought?"
"You turned him against me!"
"I should be proud indeed if I thought that I had turned him to virtue."
"The word comes well from your lips."
"I would that I heard it upon yours."
"And so, by your own confession, you stole the king's love from me, most virtuous of widows!"
"I had all gratitude and kindly thought for you. You have, as you have so often reminded me, been my benefactress. It was not necessary for you to say it, for I had never for an instant forgotten it. Yet if the king has asked me what I thought, I will not deny to you that I have said that sin is sin, and that he would be a worthier man if he shook off the guilty bonds which held him."
"Or exchanged them for others."
"For those of duty."
"Pah! Your hypocrisy sickens me! If you pretend to be a nun, why are you not where the nuns are? You would have the best of two worlds— would you not?—have all that the court can give, and yet ape the manners of the cloister. But you need not do it with me! I know you as your inmost heart knows you. I was honest, and what I did, I did before the world. You, behind your priests and your directors and your prie-dieus and your missals—do you think that you deceive me, as you deceive others?"