"God help her, and all of us, my brave friend; I have not the smallest doubt of it!"
TOSSING UP FOR A HUSBAND.
From the French of Vicomte Ponson de Terrail.
I.
The Marchioness was at her toilet. Florine and Aspasia, her two ladies'-maids, were busy powdering, as it were with hoar-frost, the bewitching widow.
She was a widow, this Marchioness, a widow of twenty-three; and wealthy, as very few persons were any longer at the court of Louis XV., her godfather.
Three-and-twenty years earlier, his Majesty had held her at the baptismal font of the chapel at Marly, and had settled upon her an income of a hundred thousand livres, by way of proving to her father, the Baron Fontevrault, who had saved his life in the battle of Fontenoy, that kings can be grateful, whatever people choose to say to the contrary.
The Marchioness then was a widow. She resided during the summer, in a charming little chateau, situated half-way up the slope overhanging the water, on the road from Bougival to Saint Germain. Madame Dubarry's estate adjoined hers; and on opening her eyes she could see, without rising, the white gableends and the white-spreading chestnut-trees of Luciennes, perched upon the heights. On this particular day—it was noon—the Marchioness, whilst her attendants dressed her hair and arranged her head-dress with the most exquisite taste, gravely employed herself in tossing up, alternately, a couple of fine oranges, which crossed each other in the air, and then dropped into the white and delicate hand that caught them in their fall.
This sleight-of-hand—which the Marchioness interrupted at times whilst she adjusted a beauty-spot on her lip, or cast an impatient glance on the crystal clock that told how time was running away with the fair widow's precious moments—had lasted for ten minutes, when the folding-doors were thrown open, and a valet, such as one sees now only on the stage announced with pompous voice—"The King!"