“Does that concern a minister of State, puppy? Drive through the rabble.”
The carriage jerked forward, and rolled on its way. Saint-Péray stood motionless, following it with his eyes. A touch on his arm aroused him. Acrid, vicious, fearfully expressive, the face of Dr Bonito peered up into his.
“Monsieur,” whispered the Rosicrucian: “there goes Madame Saint-Péray.”
Louis-Marie gave a mortal start, and put his hand to his forehead.
“There is something weaving in my brain,” he muttered. “Look, look—shake it out! My God, it is an enormous spider!”
CHAPTER VII
The Prefect of Faissigny, commanded, for the second time within a week, and with a flattering grace of intimacy, into the King’s presence, discovered an exquisite butterfly where he had left a chrysalis. The royal head—erst as round and blue as a Turk’s—was adorned with a bob-wig in buckle, from whose toupee a couple of pearl pins stuck out like clubbed antennæ; the royal limbs and body were glossy with embroidered silks; on the royal coat of maroon-coloured velvet sparkled a diamond star. Twin satellites of this sun, moreover, twinkled, like new-discovered planets, in the royal ears—a sincerest flattery, which his Majesty did not grudge to pay to so unique a pink of the elegances as M. Trix.
As he advanced to greet his visitor, he held a wisp of point d’Alençon a little raised between the finger and thumb of his right hand, while his left poised a gleaming snuff-box at a like angle. His manner was as charmingly playful as his “style” was unexceptionable. As a monarch he had no rival to challenge his pre-eminence in the Kingdom of puffs and patches.
“Welcome, my dear Prefect,” he said. “You come as irresistible as Apollo in Arcadia. I vow I am jealous of you, since seeing our adorable Daphne. Alas! that Fate hath imposed upon me the rôle of Father Ladon. But it is some compensation to have a god for suitor.”
“Your Majesty flatters and confounds me in one.”