"She is yielding already," he said at length, "she is yielding already. The King's commands are hardly announced to her, ere she feels that she must give way. It is strange--it is most strange! I could have staked my life that with her it would have been otherwise!--and yet the influence which this Chevalier d'Evran seems always to have possessed over her is equally strange. If, as she has so solemnly told me, she is not really bound to him by any tie of affection, may she not be bound by some promise rashly given in former years? We have heard of such things. However, no promises to me shall stand in the way; she shall act freely, and at her own will, as far as I am concerned;" and, sitting down, he wrote a few brief lines to Clémence, in which, though he did not pour out the bitterness of his heart, he showed how bitterly he was grieved.
"The tidings I had to tell you," he said, "were simply these, which I heard last night. The King destines your hand for another, and has already announced that such is the case. The few words that you have written show me that you are already aware of this fact, and that perhaps struggling between promises to me and an inclination to obey the royal authority, you are pained, and uncertain how to act. Such, at least, is the belief to which I am led by the few cold painful words which I have received. If that belief is right, it may make you more easy to know that, in such a case, Albert of Morseiul will never exact the fulfilment of a promise that Clémence de Marly is inclined to break."
He folded the note up, sealed it, and once more called for Riquet. Before the man appeared, however, some degree of hesitation had come over the heart of the Count, and he asked him,--
"Who did you see at the Hôtel de Rouvré?"
"I saw," replied the man, "some of the servants; and I saw two or three ecclesiastics looking after their valises in the court; and I saw Madame de Rouvré looking out of one of the windows with Mademoiselle Clémence, and the Chevalier d'Evran."
"It is enough," said the Count. "I should wish this note taken back to Paris before nightfall, and given into the hands of the same person to whom you gave the other. Take some rest, Riquet. But I should like that to be delivered before nightfall."
"I will deliver it, sir, and be back in time to dress you for the Appartement."
"The appartement," said the Count, "I had forgotten that, and most likely shall not go. Well," he added after a moment's thought, "better go there than to the Bastille. But it matters not, Riquet, Jean can dress me."
The man bowed and retired. But by the time that it was necessary for the Count to commence dressing for the appartement, Riquet had returned, bringing with him, however, no answer to the note, for which, indeed, he had not waited. The Count suffered him to arrange his dress as he thought fit, and then proceeded to the palace, which was by this time beginning to be thronged with company.
During one half of the life of Louis XIV. he was accustomed to throw open all the splendid public rooms of his palace three times in the week to all the chief nobility of his court and capital, and every thing that liberal, and even ostentatious, splendour could do to please the eye, delight the ear, or amuse the mind of those who were thus collected, was done by the monarch on the nights which were marked for what was called appartement. At an after period of his life, when the death of almost all his great ministers had cast the burden of all the affairs of state upon the King himself, he seldom, if ever, appeared at these assemblies, passing the hours, during which he furnished his court with amusement, in labouring diligently with one or other of his different ministers.