He was not looking at the Frenchman, but down at the bed of daisies that he stirred gently with his whip as he spoke. M. D'Avaux looked sharply at his haughty aquiline profile, and answered with a quickening of the breath—
"His Majesty cannot forget what you said at your table a year ago, Monseigneur. You said, Your Highness, when you heard that His Majesty had seized and dismantled Orange on the claim of the House of Longueville, that you would teach him what it was to insult a Prince of Orange, and you refused to retract or explain the words."
"His Majesty," replied William, "hath neither retracted nor explained the deed."
"Your Highness has often repeated those words."
The Prince lifted his brilliant eyes.
"I shall repeat them again, Monsieur," he said, in his strained low voice, "and again until I obtain satisfaction."
He saw that M. D'Avaux had made the allusion to humiliate him, and though there was no sign of it in his countenance the shaft had told, for the insulting seizure of his personal princely apanage, for which he had been powerless to avenge himself, had been the hardest to bear of all the insolences of France, and the revenues had been a real loss.
"You see," bowed M. D'Avaux, "that we have some reason to believe Your Highness the enemy of France."
The Prince continued to look at him steadily.
"His Christian Majesty is very interested in my affairs," he said.