“A curious name for a peasant wench, is it not? Well, I am convinced that this Yvonne in some way yet to be fathomed is connected with this infernal treachery. The police can discover nothing but to her credit; the police, of course, are fools. Vicomte, it is your task to master Yvonne’s secret.”
André’s fingers tapped on the table.
“You are a man, a soldier, a lover,” Madame continued in her cool voice. “You understand women. She is a peasant, you are a noble. A woman who loves will tell everything. You take me?”
“Perfectly.” He rose and began abruptly to pace up and down as he always did when his thoughts over-mastered him. Madame consulted her tablets.
“And then there is the Chevalier de St. Amant,” she resumed, and André came to a dead halt. “He and I do not love one another. The King has his secrets from his ministers, from his valet, from me, secrets of policy, and of his private life. The Chevalier is the King’s creature, his confidant, and he is ambitious. He fears my influence, he is an adventurer, a parvenu. When he has destroyed me the hand of Mademoiselle Denise will wipe out his antecedents, will by a stroke of the King’s pen make him ruler of France and one of its greatest nobles. But,” she rose, “he shall not, he shall not.”
“No,” said André in a low voice, “by God he shall not!”
Madame smiled. “It is your task and mine,” she added, “to defeat, to crush, the Chevalier de St. Amant.”
“Yes,” said André simply.
“We are engaged on a perilous task. There is a plot, more than one, on foot to drive me from Versailles. And they are all in it, the Queen and her ladies, monseigneurs the archbishops and bishops, the Dauphin and the princesses of the blood, the ministers, the nobles, the army, even the King’s valet. In the council, the galleries, the royal study, even the King’s bedroom, day and night they are scheming and intriguing. It will be a duel to the death—one woman against the Queen, the Church, the ministers, and the noblesse, but he who will decide is the King.”
She flung her arms up with a superbly dramatic gesture. Standing there in the triumphant consciousness of her beauty she would have moved the most merciless of her critics to admiration. And the man who would decide was Louis XV.