She clasped her hands behind her head, shaking down her bright hair that was undressed, and gazing fixedly at her reflection in a circular mirror framed with gilt balls that hung above the couch.
Hélène sat silent on the rose-colored cushions; the parrot swung idly in the ring above her head; the page had wandered to the window and was flattening his face against the pane; a monkey in a crimson coat that had been sleeping in a basket lined with white satin, now came climbing over the furniture, turning its wizened face from one to the other of the two silent, beautiful women and chattering at both of them. This was the only movement in the gorgeous little room, now filled with the spring sunshine that streamed softly through the long curtains of straw-colored silk. Aurora had dropped her arms, and with her hands clasped before her continued to gaze at her resplendent image.
Her thoughts were entirely personal; she cared very little for politics though she had an intelligent understanding of them; she had watched Augustus undertake this war light-heartedly enough, knowing that it was only an excuse to keep a large standing army with which to overawe Poland, but the quality of Karl XII having surprised them all into disaster, Aurora became angry with the war and those who had suggested it, and impatient with the enthusiastic Patkul, and gradually her attention had become fixed on the figure of the King of Sweden, rendered more arresting by every success, more terrible in the eyes of men and more attractive in the eyes of women.
Aurora knew something of what the Court of Sweden was like.
“He has never met a woman like me,” she thought, and there was a glow, as of coming triumph, at her heart.
The other woman’s reflections had traveled far from herself! they were with a fair, rather ordinary-looking soldier, with short-sighted, anxious eyes, and a blunt-featured face that had a certain pathos in its open sincerity and goodness, who was now probably riding to and fro in the confusion of battle, steadying the Saxon troops against the victorious ranks of Sweden.
She loved him so utterly, so ardently believed in his cause and his life-work that he seemed to her like a being charmed whom no actual danger could touch, yet she yearned over him, child as she was, with a yearning that was near tears; and this, though her whole being was pervaded by the supreme happiness of her love which kept her in a serene and beautiful aloofness from all that was painful or terrifying.
The monkey clambered to the end of the couch, dropped into Hélène’s lap, and began stealing the sugar scattered over the cushions.
Aurora moved slowly from the mirror and told the page to bring her writing materials; when they were given her she began to write, not an answer to her lover’s neglected letter but a paper of French verses to Karl XII.
Hélène, wrapt in her dreams, heeded her no more than she did the monkey crunching sweetmeats on her lap.