Chapter 24

Chapter XXIV
The False King
In the mean time, usurped royalty was playing out its part bravely at Vaux. Philippe gave orders that for his petit lever, the grandes entrees, already prepared to appear before the King, should be introduced. He determined to give this order notwithstanding the absence of M. d’Herblay, who did not return, and our readers know for what reason. But the Prince, not believing that the absence could be prolonged, wished, as all rash spirits do, to try his valor and his fortune independently of all protection and all counsel. Another reason urged him to this,- Anne of Austria was about to appear; the guilty mother was about to stand in the presence of her sacrificed son. Philippe was not willing, if he should betray any weakness, to render the man a witness of it before whom he was bound thenceforth to display so much strength.

Philippe opened his folding-doors, and several persons entered silently. Philippe did not stir while his valets de chambre dressed him. He had watched, the evening before, all the habits of his brother, and played the King in such a manner as to awaken no suspicion. He was then completely dressed in his hunting costume when he received his visitors. His own memory and the notes of Aramis announced everybody to him, first of all Anne of Austria, to whom Monsieur gave his hand, and then Madame with M. de Saint-Aignan. He smiled at seeing these countenances, but trembled on recognizing his mother. That figure so noble, so imposing, ravaged by pain, pleaded in his heart the cause of that famous Queen who had immolated a child to reasons of state. He found his mother still handsome. He knew that Louis XIV loved her; and he promised himself to love her likewise, and not to prove a cruel chastisement for her old age. He contemplated his brother with a tenderness easily to be understood. The latter had usurped nothing over him, had cast no shade over his life; a separate branch, he allowed the stem to rise without heeding its elevation or the majesty of its life. Philippe promised himself to be a kind brother to this Prince, who required nothing but gold to minister to his pleasures. He bowed with a friendly air to De Saint-Aignan, who was all reverences and smiles, and tremblingly held out his hand to Henrietta, his sister-in-law, whose beauty struck him; but he saw in her eyes an expression of coldness which would facilitate, as he thought, their future relations.

“How much more easy,” thought he, “it will be to be the brother of that woman than her gallant, if she evinces towards me a coldness that my brother could not have for her, and which is imposed upon me as a duty.” The only visit he dreaded at this moment was that of the Queen; his heart, his mind, had just been shaken by so violent a trial that in spite of their firm temperament they would not, perhaps, support another shock. Happily the Queen did not come.

Then