The chevalier, all the same, came to the rescue without reflecting on the inconveniences, and went about it so adroitly that soon the horse was on his feet again, and the rider extricated. But the latter was covered with mud and could hardly limp along. He was carried, as best they could, into the house of the Swiss, and seated in his turn in the big arm-chair.

‘Sir,’ he said to the chevalier, ‘you are a gentleman, unquestionably. You have rendered me a great service, but you can render me a still greater one. Here is a message from the king to madame the marquise and the message is very urgent, as you see, since my horse and I, in order to go more quickly, have almost broken our necks. You understand that in the state I am in, with a lame leg, I would be unable to carry in this paper. For that, I’d need to be carried in myself. Will you go in my place?’

At the same time he drew from his pocket a large envelope, gilded with arabesques, accompanied by the royal seal.

‘Very willingly, sir,’ answered the chevalier, taking the letter. And nimble and light as a feather, he set out, running on the tips of his toes.

V

When the chevalier arrived at the château, a Swiss guard once again was before the peristyle.

‘Order of the king,’ said the young man, who this time, had no longer any fear of halberds; and showing his letter he entered gaily amidst half a dozen lackeys.

A tall usher, standing in the middle of the vestibule, seeing the order and the royal seal, bowed gravely like a poplar bent by the wind; then, with one of his bony fingers, he touched, smiling, the corner of some wainscoting.

A little swing door, hid by a tapestry, opened at once as if of itself. The bony man made a welcoming movement; the chevalier entered, and the tapestry, which was half open, fell into place softly behind him.

A silent valet showed him then into a large room, then into a corridor, out of which opened two or three little side rooms, then at last into a second drawing-room, and asked him to wait a moment.

‘Am I at the Château of Versailles all over again?’ the chevalier asked himself. ‘Are we going to begin playing at hide-and-seek again?’

Trianon was at the period neither what it is to-day, nor what it had been. It has been said that Madame de Maintenon made Versailles an oratory, and Madame de Pompadour a boudoir. It has been said as well of Trianon that this little porcelain château was Madame de Montespan’s boudoir. Whatever is the truth about all these boudoirs it seems that Louis XV put them everywhere. The same gallery in which his ancestor had stepped majestically, was at this time quaintly divided into an infinite number of compartments. There were boudoirs of all colours; the king used to flit like a butterfly in those groves of silk and velvet. ‘Do you think my little furnished rooms are in good taste?’ he asked the beautiful Countess of Séran one day. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I would like them blue.’ As blue was the king’s colour, this answer flattered him. At their second meeting, Madame de Séran found the room furnished in blue as she had wanted it to be.

The room in which, at the moment, the chevalier found himself alone was neither blue, nor white, nor pink, but full of mirrors. It is well known what advantage a pretty woman who has a pretty figure gains from letting her picture be reflected thus in a thousand aspects. She dazzles, she, so to speak, envelops the man she wants to please. Whatever he looks at, he sees her; how can he avoid it? Nothing remains but to fly or to avow himself subjugated.

The chevalier looked at the garden too. There, behind the arbours and the labyrinths, the statues and the marble vases, was beginning to dawn the pastoral taste which the marquise was going to make