"What! Coigny in love with his wife?"
"Madly. Only it is with the most delicate unostentation in the world. He is perfectly comme il faut, and to general eyes devoted still to Mme. d'Egmont."
"A charming romance. Thank you, and farewell."
Richelieu hurried away, and de Gêvres also moved more rapidly than was his wont in search of his partner. While the hours of that long evening passed, the emotions varied with them. As la Châteauroux had her triumph with, so had her cousin his revenge upon, the King. The third dance—menuet des sabres—Louis performed with his wife. Under cover of imitating royalty, de Coigny sought Victorine for his companion. Henri, biting his lips, watched de Gêvres lead madame forth, and then, totally indifferent to every unengaged woman in the room, sought out his Marquise, who left M. Trudaine with a little laugh, and devoted herself prettily to the husband with whom she had, as she said, merely a casual acquaintance. Meantime the King was frowning furiously on the presumption of his still dauntless rival. For Claude, in the face of a dozen competitors, under the very shadow of a warning glance from de Berryer, which unmistakably spelled lettre de cachet, had, with scarcely so much as a by-your-leave, triumphantly carried his cousin off from her admirers to the head of the third twenty, and proceeded to make two wrong steps during the dance, much to the amusement of la Châteauroux and the disgust of the King: who, though France were tottering, had never been guilty of such a misdemeanor.
The grand supper, which began at midnight, was virtually ended at one o'clock by the departure of the King; although Mme. de Châteauroux, at Richelieu's side, still stayed at table, and the Court, from curiosity, remained with her. There was a murmur, whether of disappointment or surprise, when the de Mailly cousins, Henri and Claude, with merely the customary salutes, passed together from the room. Five minutes later the Duchess, refusing escort, departed unattended, and the lingering Court, heartily sick of its own dull self, bored, sleepy, with aching eyes and feet, rose from the horseshoe table, and went its way to a dubious rest.
For an hour every apartment on the upper floors of the palace was ablaze with light. In the city of Versailles those streets which, during the great season, were the abodes of the lesser nobility, were still alive with coaches, chairs, and link-boys; while not a window in any of the tall, narrow houses but glowed with the mild fire of candles. In one of these streets, the Avenue de St. Cloud, within the building called by its owner the Châtelet Persane, in half the apartment of the third floor, Claude and Henri kept rooms together. Just below them, more luxurious in fashion and less in content, were the court apartments of the Marquis and Marquise de Coigny.
Victorine, nearly ready for the night, with a silken négligé thrown over her elaborate white gown, sat before her dressing-table, brushing with her own hands the clouds of powder from her dark hair. This hair, comparatively short, according to the dictates of fashion, was still her only claim to beauty. Thus at night, when the soft, natural curls could cluster unreservedly about her pale face and neck, the little Marquise was far prettier than in the daytime. She was not beautiful even now. The mirror showed her a delicate, oval face, pallid and hollow-cheeked; two abnormally large eyes, that were green and weary-looking to-night; the brows above them lightly marked, and too straight to harmonize with her great orbs; a nose delicate, short, and tilted piquantly upward—a feature more worthy of a coquettish grisette than the daughter of one of the oldest families in France; and a mouth indefinite, long, pale, sometimes very full of character, that would have rendered Boucher and the miniature painters desperate.
Victorine had sent away her maid as soon as she was ready to sit down quietly. It seemed to her that, sleepy as the girl appeared, she would be able to read too much from her mistress's face, to see too far into her mind. Besides this, it was a relief to be alone. During the strange month which she had just lived, Mme. de Coigny had fallen suddenly in love with freedom. The suffering which she was enduring from bondage was the penalty she paid for her reckless wilfulness. But had it been ennui now, as of old, under which she chafed, she might have made further effort to dispel it by means of another of those startling escapades which, since she had amused the King with one of them, the Court had become reconciled to. This was not ennui, then. This, she thought vaguely, and with a kind of rebellion, was the haunting image of a single person, the unchanging recurrence before her mental eyes of a man's face—the face of François de Bernis, as she had seen it first a month since at Fontainebleau.
The brush in her hand had almost ceased to pass over her hair, and Victorine was staring fixedly into the mirror, without, however, seeing herself. Presently the door to her boudoir swung gently open. She started slightly and turned about in her chair. M. de Coigny, her husband, in his long lounging-robe of green and gold, stood upon the threshold. She regarded him silently. He hesitated for a moment, and then asked, deprecatingly:
"Will you perhaps be so gracious as to permit my entrance?"