"I was so fourteen days ago," replied the Count; "but as little did I expect to see you."
"Oh, this is in some sort my native country," replied the Prince; "and being here upon family affairs, I could not, of course, hesitate to come and grace the first entertainment of the good Duke. There seems a promise of a goodly assembly; and, indeed, there are attractions enough, what between a new governor, a new governess, and Clémence de Marly."
"And pray who is Clémence de Marly?" demanded the Count. "I am a rustic, you see, and have never yet heard of her."
"Rustic, indeed!" said the Prince; "why all the Parisian world is mad about her. She is the most admired, the most adored, I may say, of all the stars or comets, or what not, that have appeared in my day; as beautiful as Hebe, as graceful as the brightest of the Graces, as proud as Juno, about ten times colder than Diana, and as witty as Madame de Cornuel. People began to fancy that the King himself was in love with her; only you know that now, under the domination L'Amie de l'Amie, those days of folly and scandal have gone by, and, on my word, the saucy beauty treated majesty no better than she does nobility. I myself heard her----"
"But who is Clémence de Marly?" demanded the Count again; "you have not satisfied me, Marsillac. Of what race or family is she? I know of no such name or family connected with the Rouvrés."
The Prince replied in a lower tone, "She is an orphan, a foundling, an any thing you like. Some say," he added in a whisper, "a natural child of the King's own; but others again, and this is the true story, say that she is a natural child of De Rouvré's. There was a tale some time ago, you know, before he married, about him and the Countess de ----, a person of very large fortune; and as this girl has wealth at command, and lives always with the Rouvrés, there can be no doubt of the matter. Madame de Rouvré, having no family, wisely treats her as her child, and spoils her as if she were her grandchild. They used to say she was to be married to your friend the Chevalier d'Evran, whom I saw hanging at her elbow just now. Hericourt vows that he will cut the throat of any man who marries her without his consent; but Louvois is supposed to have laid out a match for her even nearer to his race than that; Segnelai is not without hopes of carrying off the prize for some of his people; and they seem in these days to care no more for the bend sinister than if the Adam and Eve laws still prevailed, and we were all the children of nature together."
"This is the fair lady that d'Evran has been talking to me about," replied the Count; "but he talked of her and her beauty so coolly, that I can scarcely suppose he is much in love."
"Just come round hither and look at him then," said Marsillac, moving a little farther down, so as to give a fuller view into the other room. "You know d'Evran's way of being in love; lying down upon a sofa and playing with a feather fan, while the lady stands at the distance of two yards from him, and he says more clever things to her in five minutes than any body else can say in an hour. There he is doing it even now."
The Count moved slowly into the place which Marsillac had left for him, so as not to attract attention by flagrant examination of what was going on, and then raised his eyes towards the part of the great saloon at which the Prince had been looking. The group that they lighted on was certainly in every respect a singular one. In the centre of it stood or rather leaned beside a high-backed chair, in an attitude of the most perfect grace that it is possible to conceive, which could not have been studied, for there was ease and nature in every line, a young lady, apparently of one or two and twenty years of age, whose beauty was both of a very exquisite and a very singular cast. It fully justified the description which had been given of it by the Chevalier d'Evran; the eyes were deep deep blue, but fringed with long and dark lashes, thickset but smooth, and sweeping in one even graceful fringe. The lips were, indeed, twin roses; the complexion delicately fair, and yet the face bearing in the cheek the warm hue of undiminished health. Those lips, even when not speaking, were always a little, a very little, parted, showing the bright pearl-like teeth beneath; the brow was smooth and fair, and yet the eyebrow which marked the exact line of the forehead above the eyes, changed, by the slightest elevation or depression, the whole aspect of the countenance with every passing emotion. With every change, too, the other features harmonised, and there was a bright sparklingness about the face, even at that distance, which made it, to the eyes of the Count, resemble a lovely landscape in an early summer morning, where every thing seems fresh life and brightness. The ear, too, which was slightly turned towards them, was most beautiful; and the form, though the dress of that day did not serve to expose it much, was seen swelling through the drapery in every line of exquisite beauty. The hand, the arm, the foot, the neck and throat, were all perfect as any sculptor could have desired to model; and the whole, with the grace of the attitude and the beauty of the expression, formed an object that one might have well wished to look at for long hours.
On the right of the lady, precisely as the Prince had described him, lay the Chevalier d'Evran, richly dressed, and, perhaps, affecting a little more indifference than he really felt. Half kneeling, half sitting, at her feet, was the Marquis de Hericourt, saying nothing, but looking up in her face with an expression which plainly implied that he was marveling whether she or himself were the loveliest creature upon earth. On her left hand stood a gentleman whom the Count instantly recognised as one of the highest and most distinguished nobles of the court of Louis XIV., several years older than either the Marquis or the Chevalier, but still apparently as much if not more smitten than either. Behind her, and round about her, in various attitudes, were half a dozen others, each striving to catch her attention for a single moment; but it was to the elder gentleman whom we have mentioned that she principally listened, except, indeed, when some witticism of the Chevalier caused her to turn and smile upon him for a moment. Amongst the rest of the little train behind her were two personages, for neither of whom the Count de Morseiul entertained any very great esteem: the Chevalier de Rohan, a ruined and dissipated scion of one of the first families in France, and a gentleman of the name of Hatréoumont, whom the Count had known while serving with the army in Flanders, and who, though brave as a lion, bore such a character for restless and unprincipled scheming, that the Count had soon reduced their communication to a mere passing bow.