Chapter 37

Chapter XXXVII:
The Butterfly-Chase.

The king, on retiring to his apartments to give some directions and to
arrange his ideas, found on his toilette-glass a small note, the
handwriting of which seemed disguised. He opened it and read - "Come
quickly, I have a thousand things to say to you." The king and Madame
had not been separated a sufficiently long time for these thousand things
to be the result of the three thousand which they had been saying to each
other during the route which separated Vulaines from Fontainebleau. The
confused and hurried character of the note gave the king a great deal to
reflect upon. He occupied himself but slightly with his toilette, and
set off to pay his visit to Madame. The princess, who did not wish to
have the appearance of expecting him, had gone into the gardens with the
ladies of her suite. When the king was informed that Madame had left her
apartments and had gone for a walk in the gardens, he collected all the
gentlemen he could find, and invited them to follow him. He found Madame
engaged in chasing butterflies, on a large lawn bordered with heliotrope
and flowering broom. She was looking on as the most adventurous and
youngest of her ladies ran to and fro, and with her back turned to a high
hedge, very impatiently awaited the arrival of the king, with whom she
had appointed the rendezvous. The sound of many feet upon the gravel
walk made her turn round. Louis XIV. was hatless, he had struck down
with his cane a peacock butterfly, which Monsieur de Saint-Aignan had
picked up from the ground quite stunned.

"You see, Madame," said the king, as he approached her, "that I, too, am
hunting on your behalf!" and then, turning towards those who had
accompanied him, said, "Gentlemen, see if each of you cannot obtain as
much for these ladies," a remark which was a signal for all to retire.
And thereupon a curious spectacle might have been observed; old and
corpulent courtiers were seen running after butterflies, losing their
hats as they ran, and with their raised canes cutting down the myrtles
and the furze, as they would have done the Spaniards.

The king offered Madame his arm, and they both selected, as the center of
observation, a bench with a roof of boards and moss, a kind of hut
roughly designed by the modest genius of one of the gardeners who had
inaugurated the picturesque and fanciful amid the formal style of the
gardening of that period. This sheltered retreat, covered with
nasturtiums and climbing roses, screened the bench, so that the
spectators, insulated in the middle of the lawn, saw and were seen on
every side, but could not be heard, without perceiving those who might
approach for the purpose of listening. Seated thus, the king made a sign
of