“Of course.”
“If I’m not asked this time, I shall die of grief.”
“Have you made the request before?”
“I have attempted!”
“Well?”
“When the Lord Chamberlain refused me, I shed tears of blood,” Madame Wetme wanly retailed.
“It would have been easier, no doubt, in the late king’s time!”
Madame Wetme took a long sighing breath.
“I only once saw him in my life,” she said, “and then he was standing against a tree, in an attitude offensive to modesty.”
“Tell me ... as a public man, what has your husband done——”