With these words, Louis offered his hand; and Laura, without embarrassment or presumption, accepted the honor conferred upon her, and was led out to the dance. A murmur of admiration followed her appearance, but she seemed quite unconscious of the impression she had made. Her lovely countenance was neither lit up by pride, nor suffused by bashfulness. Her cheeks were slightly flushed by natural modesty, and her sweet, unaffected bearing enhanced her incomparable beauty of person.
Even De Montespan herself could not withhold her tribute of admiration. At first she had darted glances of hatred toward an imaginary rival; but, a calm survey of Laura's pure and angelic expression of face reassured her. This girl had no mind to entrap the king, and if Louis had not courage enough to dance with HER (De Montespan), in presence of that canting hypocrite De Maintenon, perhaps it was quite as well that he had provided himself with a partner sans coquetterie, and therefore sans consequence.
Madame de Maintenon, too, had remarked Laura, as, gracefully emerging from her concealment behind the seat of the duchess, she had unostentatiously accepted the king's invitation to dance.
"What a union of tact with tenderness of heart is apparent in all that his majesty does," said she to the Duke de Maine, who was standing beside her. "This young girl is the personification of innocence and purity, and his majesty's selection of her as his partner proves that he not only desires to pay homage to youth and beauty, but also to virtue and modesty."
"How beautiful she is!" murmured a young cavalier, who, with
Barbesieur Louvois, was watching the dancers.
"Why do you sigh?" replied Barbesieur. "You ought rather to be proud of your future bride."
"My future bride!" echoed he, dolefully. "I would she were, my dear friend. But although your father has so graciously given his consent, I am as far from obtaining her as ever."
"It you wait for that," whispered Barbesieur in return, "you may wait until the day of judgment. My sister is one of those incomprehensible beings that loves opposition for opposition's sake. If she is disdainful, it is precisely because she is quite as much enamored of you as you are of her. She is a sort of chaste Artemis who is ashamed of her preference for a man, and would die rather than confess it."
"She enchants me at one moment, and drives me to despair the next," sighed the marquis.
"No need for despair," was the reply. "My dear marquis," continued Barbesieur, coming close to the ear of the Italian, "what will you give me if I promise that you shall become her husband?"