It was a quarter to nine, and the company grew slightly bored. In three-quarters of an hour two hundred people can easily dispose of ten new scandals, redigest twenty ancient ones, and anticipate as many as the remaining minutes will permit. But undiluted gossip, spiced with epigram and heated with wit though it may be, grows nauseating after a while, if taken in too great quantities; and, through the great room, to-night, there were enough chronic dispeptics of this class to make conversation finally begin to lag. The abstract murmur, to which Claude was moodily listening, changed in character. Suddenly, as the cries of the ushers at last rang out, it became as present wine to former tepid milk:
"Mesdames, messieurs, their Majesties! Way for the King! Way for the Queen!—Will you have the goodness to move just here."
The four royal ushers, with their white staffs, passed down the room, forming an alley for the passage of the King. No ribbons were used, as in the days of the fourteenth Louis. The courtiers were better trained now. They pressed back voluntarily on either side, leaving a very well-formed lane between the two crowds. A quick silence fell over the room and the circling throng was still. Each one had sought the company in which he or she wished to stand. For none knew just how long it would take his Majesty to reach the other end of the room, where he would open the first minuet. Claude, by a series of delicate manœuvres, had reached the side of Mme. de Châteauroux, and, despite the silence, found opportunity to whisper:
"You will not forget—that you have promised me the first dance?"
And the favorite, looking into her cousin's eyes, felt, even in her heartless heart, a little throb of pity for the utter abandon of his infatuation.
"I do not forget, mon cher. But thou shouldst have kept away from me till the progress was over."
Claude shrugged and smiled happily.
"Mesdames, messieurs, their Majesties!"
Two more ushers entered and passed rapidly down the aisle, backward. Louis and his wife, hand in hand, followed after. The King was, as usual, magnificently dressed and glittering with jewels. His face, however, was as unpropitious as possible. He wore his most bored and fretful look, and he walked straight down the room for a distance of twenty-five feet, heedless of his wife, without glancing at a soul. Marie Leczinska, on the contrary, carelessly attired in a costume of deep brownish-red brocade, pale of face, tired-eyed, yet wearing a curiously contented look, bowed timidly to three or four of her dames du palais and some of her abbés, who had the grace to return the salutes with a show of respect that was born of pity. The company, however, quickly felt the chilling breath of the master's ill-humor.
"Parbleu!" muttered de Gêvres to Richelieu, as they stood together at the far end of the gallery, "madame herself is to be ignored to-night."