"Can it be true?" he went on now. "Can it? Yet, it must be, Louise is in a position to know all, everything that transpires, everything that is known in London: the Duchesse de Castellucchio must know every secret that her admirer possesses."
"If, sire, he is her admirer."
"What else should he be?"
"Prétendu, perhaps, sire. Perhaps soupirant, awaiting events and fortune. Needy men have often married rich women, heiresses, women who can set them on their feet again; and they have done so without loving them."
"It is true," the King said, speaking in tones so low that none but his companion could hear him, but still tones clear, keen, incisive.
Then, lowering his voice as he changed the subject, the King said, "Is he gone?"
"He is, sire, in this room."
"Summon him."
Obedient to this order De Louvois rose from the far from comfortable seat in which he sat, and, proceeding down the gallery while smiling with a smile that had little mirth in it and scarcely any cordiality, reached at last a courtier who, clad in a green hunting costume adorned with gold lace and having on his shoulder the device in gold of a bugle above a sun, was talking to a lady. This courtier was no less a person than De Beaurepaire in his dress of Grand Veneur, while the lady, who possessed a simpering weak face that, in her case, was no index to her mind, and whose little curls all over her head gave her an appearance of youth to which she no longer had any claim, was Madame de Sevigne.
"His Majesty," De Louvois said to the former, after bowing to the latter, "desires to speak with you."