Chapter 34

Chapter XXXIV:
The Promenade by Torchlight.

Saint-Aignan, delighted with what he had just heard, and rejoiced at what
the future foreshadowed for him, bent his steps towards De Guiche's two
rooms. He who, a quarter of an hour previously, would hardly yield up
his own rooms for a million francs, was now ready to expend a million, if
it were necessary, upon the acquisition of the two happy rooms he coveted
so eagerly. But he did not meet with so many obstacles. M. de Guiche
did not yet know where he was to lodge, and, besides, was still too far
ill to trouble himself about his lodgings; and so Saint-Aignan obtained
De Guiche's two rooms without difficulty. As for M. Dangeau, he was so
immeasurably delighted, that he did not even give himself the trouble to
think whether Saint-Aignan had any particular reason for removing.
Within an hour after Saint-Aignan's new resolution, he was in possession
of the two rooms; and ten minutes later Malicorne entered, followed by
the upholsterers. During this time, the king asked for Saint-Aignan; the
valet ran to his late apartments and found M. Dangeau there; Dangeau sent
him on to De Guiche's, and Saint-Aignan was found there; but a little
delay had of course taken place, and the king had already exhibited once
or twice evident signs of impatience, when Saint-Aignan entered his royal
master's presence, quite out of breath.

"You, too, abandon me, then," said Louis XIV., in a similar tone of
lamentation to that with which Caesar, eighteen hundred years previously,
had pronounced the _Et tu quoque_.

"Sire, I am far from abandoning you, for, on the contrary, I am busily
occupied in changing my lodgings."

"What do you mean? I thought you had finished moving three days ago."

"Yes, sire. But I don't find myself comfortable where I am, so I am
going to change to the opposite side of the building."

"Was I not right when I said you were abandoning me?" exclaimed the
king. "Oh! this exceeds all endurance. But so it is: there was only one
woman for whom my heart cared at all, and all my family is leagued
together to tear her from me; and my friend, to whom I confided my
distress, and who helped me to bear up under it, has become wearied of my
complaints and is going to leave me without even asking my permission."

Saint-Aignan began to laugh. The king at once guessed there must be some
mystery in this want of respect. "What is it?" cried the king, full of
hope.

"This, sire, that the friend whom the king calumniates is going to try if
he cannot restore to his sovereign the happiness he has lost."

"Are you going to let me see La Valliere?" said Louis XIV.

"I cannot say so, positively, but I hope so."

"How - how? - tell me