"Madame," the King replied, while still endeavouring to lift the unhappy Princess to her feet and while the tears streamed from his own eyes as he witnessed her tears falling. "I--I--it rests not with me. There are others to whom are confided----"
"Others," she wailed, yet still with some of her haughty contempt left in her tones. "Others. What others? De Louvois, who reeks of the roture. De Louvois the plebeian; La Reynie whose name should be Le Renard; that woman who weaves her toils----"
"Madame, silence! I command--nay, nay, I beg of you to be silent. Not a word of----"
"Ah! I am distraught. I know not what I say. Yet if you will not hear me nor have mercy on me, at least have mercy on my grief and sorrow. See--see--Louis de Bourbon--I kneel at your feet in supplication even as once your father knelt at mine, and--God help me!--you are as inexorable to me as I was to him; yet I kneel in a better, a nobler hope. Sire!" she continued in her misery. "Sire, look on me! If you will not pity me, pity my tears, my supplications; see how abject I am. I--I--Anne de Beaurepaire, who never thought to sue to mortal man. Ah! be not so pitiless, Louis! You! of whom it has been said that you are never wantonly cruel."
"Nor am I now," the King exclaimed, his face convulsed with grief and emotion. "It is not I, but France. Had Lou--the Prince de Beaurepaire--and I been simple gentlemen; had he but aimed his treacherous shaft against me and my life, then he might have gone in peace for the sake of our childhood together, for the sake of the noble Anne, his mother, whom," his voice sinking to a murmur, "my austere father could not refrain from loving. But it was against France. France and her ancient laws and rights; her throne; all that makes France what she is, all that makes your proud race--a race as proud as my own, or as the race of Guise, or Bretagne, or Montmorenci, or Courtenai--what it is. France, for which I stand here the symbol and representative; France which has but one other name--Bourbon."
"Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!" the Princess wailed. "As you are great, as you are Louis the Bourbon, be great in your pardon. Show mercy to a broken-hearted woman."
"If I might I would. But if I spare him, having spared none other who conspired against France, will France spare me? Will she pardon her unjust steward? And there are others. The Council, the great Ministers----"
"Yet," the Princess cried, "it is you who have said, 'L'Etat c'est moi'. You, whose 'Je le veux' none have ever dared to question and still live."
"Nevertheless," the King said, still very gently while sick at heart at being forced to so reply, "he dared----"
"And," she sobbed, loosing her grasp on his hand and arm as she fell an inert mass to the floor; "therefore must die."