“The lady who will shortly take all our places, Madame la Marquise de Pompadour.”
He glanced at Denise, and the glance went home. She had refused to let him ruin Madame de Pompadour and André with her; he had obeyed because he loved her; and he alone, poor boy, was to pay the penalty. In Denise’s soul, stricken by remorse, surged the wild desire that had been shaping for days. If only by some great act of renunciation, of self-sacrifice, she could repair the terrible harm that her love for André had done to her and their cause.
“We are ruined, beaten,” the Comtesse des Forges said in a hopeless tone. “That woman has won. Fate is against us.”
“Yes, nothing but a miracle can save us now,” St. Benôit remarked.
“And even the Abbé will admit that the age of miracles is past.”
“You forget, mon cher. The grisette is herself a miracle—of Satan,” retorted the Abbé, but the company was in no mood for jests. The completeness of Madame de Pompadour’s triumph was too convincing and too galling. And the Duke’s dismissal they knew well would be followed shortly by other blows as cruel, as well directed, and as insulting. The King was in the hands of an able and unscrupulous woman with an abler hero as her ally, and the King was absolute master of France.
“If only His Majesty would fall ill,” murmured the Duchess, “if only he would fall dangerously ill.”
“Ah!” the Comtesse cried, with a splendidly vindictive gleam under her heavy eyelids, “ah, then we could treat that wanton as we treated the Duchess of Châteauroux.”
The company assented in silence. Well did they all remember the memorable events of Metz in 1743, when Louis the Well-Beloved had been smitten down, and the Church and the Court had so skilfully used his fears of death to get the maîtresse en titre, the Duchess of Châteauroux, dismissed.
“And the Duchess died, the miserable sinner,” said Mademoiselle Claire, “very soon. It surely was the judgment of Heaven.”