“I will show you the way, if you will permit me, Angélique: Versailles is the only fitting theatre for the display of beauty and spirit like yours.”
Angélique thoroughly believed this, and for a few moments was dazzled and overpowered by the thought of the golden doors of her ambition opened by the hand of the Intendant. A train of images, full-winged and as gorgeous as birds of paradise, flashed across her vision. La Pompadour was getting old, men said, and the King was already casting his eyes round the circle of more youthful beauties in his Court for a successor. “And what woman in the world,” thought she, “could vie with Angélique des Meloises if she chose to enter the arena to supplant La Pompadour? Nay, more! If the prize of the King were her lot, she would outdo La Maintenon herself, and end by sitting on the throne.”
Angélique was not, however, a milkmaid to say yes before she was asked. She knew her value, and had a natural distrust of the Intendant's gallant speeches. Moreover, the shadow of the lady of Beaumanoir would not wholly disappear. “Why do you say such flattering things to me, Chevalier?” asked she. “One takes them for earnest coming from the Royal Intendant. You should leave trifling to the idle young men of the city, who have no business to employ them but gallanting us women.”
“Trifling! By St. Jeanne de Choisy, I was never more in earnest, Mademoiselle!” exclaimed Bigot. “I offer you the entire devotion of my heart.” St. Jeanne de Choisy was the sobriquet in the petits appartements for La Pompadour. Angélique knew it very well, although Bigot thought she did not.
“Fair words are like flowers, Chevalier,” replied she, “sweet to smell and pretty to look at; but love feeds on ripe fruit. Will you prove your devotion to me if I put it to the test?”
“Most willingly, Angélique!” Bigot thought she contemplated some idle freak that might try his gallantry, perhaps his purse. But she was in earnest, if he was not.
“I ask, then, the Chevalier Bigot that before he speaks to me again of love or devotion, he shall remove that lady, whoever she may be, from Beaumanoir!” Angélique sat erect, and looked at him with a long, fixed look, as she said this.
“Remove that lady from Beaumanoir!” exclaimed he in complete surprise; “surely that poor shadow does not prevent your accepting my devotion, Angélique?”
“Yes, but it does, Chevalier! I like bold men. Most women do, but I did not think that even the Intendant of New France was bold enough to make love to Angélique des Meloises while he kept a wife or mistress in stately seclusion at Beaumanoir!”
Bigot cursed the shrewishness and innate jealousy of the sex, which would not content itself with just so much of a man's favor as he chose to bestow, but must ever want to rule single and alone. “Every woman is a despot,” thought he, “and has no mercy upon pretenders to her throne.”