With these words the capricious King sat down to table, and was assisted to various niceties by the white hands of the Countess, with whom he afterwards sat down to chess, of which he was so passionately fond that he played it in his carriage, where the men were pegs inserted into holes in the squares of a perforated board, so that the motion could not displace them.
'Ah, Countess,' he mumbled as the game began, 'you have the most adorable hands heaven ever formed!'
'Yet they are the hands of a Lorrainer.'
'Have you ever seen this Marie Louise, of whom all men talk?'
'No;' replied the Countess, coldly; 'but why, sire?'
'Because we are told that she is full of the most dangerous beauty, united to the sweetest sensibility.'
'Ah; she is cunning perhaps, and is one of those who rule by tender glances, tears and sighs, or by an affectation of enthusiasm she never feels. I have known many women of this kind.'
'You are piqued, my dear Countess—she is a mere girl—a child.'
'So is the Duchess de Montbazon—yet she has had eight lovers.'
'You are severe, Clara; Madame de Montbazon is the wife of a peer of France.'