The Marquis bowed respectfully . . .
"Richelieu, you will present him to me to-morrow, at my first reception, without ceremony," said the king to the marshal. Then making an affectionate gesture to Létorière, Louis XV. entered the palace.
The next day Létorière was officially presented; a few days after, Louis XV. appointed him master of the horse, and later, he gave him a cornetcy in the Mousquetaires.
From this moment the fortunes of Létorière did nothing but grow, for the king's affection for him increased every day.
It would take too long to tell how the favorite became the most conspicuous man at court: but this progress was simple and natural. To all his rare advantages of mind, of person, of birth, and of heart, there was soon added an exquisite taste in everything. His horses, his furniture, and his dress became the type of elegance and good taste. In short, at the end of four years the poor scholar of Plessis College had become one of the most brilliant courtiers, and inspired at once admiration, envy, hatred, adoration, as do all people endowed with superior parts.
This narrative will not allow the recital of many brilliant exploits of which the Marquis was the hero, or of which he was supposed to be the hero, for his discretion was rare.
But it was well known that he could never be reproached with baseness or perfidy in love. In two duels he showed himself brave and generous: the only fault with which he could be charged, was great extravagance; but this he could well afford, owing to the gaining of his lawsuit against the Intendancy of Poitou, and also to the munificence and bounties of the king, who successively appointed him Commendatory Abbé of the Trinité de Vendôme, commander of the united orders of St. Lazare and Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel, a colonel of cavalry, counsellor of State, of the sword, and grand seneschal of Aunis.
Such was the prodigious prosperity which Létorière reached during the four years after his fortunate encounter with the king.
Amid all his successes, Létorière had never forgotten the great blue eyes of the Opera Ball, and almost every day he contemplated his ring with sadness.
Notwithstanding this device, it follows you everywhere, written under an eye of such a charming blue, which appeared to regard him with a tenderness full of confidence and serenity, the Marquis feared that he had been completely forgotten by his mysterious protectress. In four years he had received no news from her. Sometimes he trembled lest his reputation as a man of gallantry, by awaking in the breast of the unknown a just jealousy, might forever alienate her from him; sometimes he feared that absence, or sickness, or death even, might have deprived him of this strange friendship.