"Do not speak thus of a virtuous and charming girl," said the marquis. "She has no lover. If she had, she has not been abused by him, unless, indeed, he be the basest off men."
"Excuse me, marquis. I forgot that I was speaking to the champion of all actresses. By the by, how is Mademoiselle Cochois?"
* * * * * * * *
"Poor thing!" just at that moment said the Princess Amelia of Prussia, the king's sister, and canoness of Quedlimburgh, to her usual confidant, the beautiful Countess Von Kleist, as she was returning to the palace. "Did you observe my brother's agitation?"
"No, madame," said Madame de Maupertuis, gouvernante of the princess, an excellent but simple and absent-minded person; "I did not."
"Eh? I did not speak to you," said the princess, with the brusque and decided tone which sometimes made her so like Frederick. "Do you ever see anything? Look you here. Count those stars for a while. I have something to say to Von Kleist I do not wish you to hear."
Madame de Maupertuis closed her ears conscientiously, and the princess, leaning towards the countess, who sat opposite to her, said:
"Say what you please, it seems to me that for the first time, perhaps for fifteen or twenty years since I have been capable of observation, the king is in love."
"So your royal highness said last year about Barberini; yet his majesty never dreamed of her."
"Never? You are mistaken, my child. The young Chancellor Coccei married her, and my brother thought so much of the matter that he was in a rage more violent than any he had ever known before for three days."