by exile for the Parlement, but for the rest of us, by one word, or even worse, by silence. Do you know what the king’s silence is, when, with his speechless look, instead of answering you, he scrutinizes you in passing and annihilates you? After the block and the Bastille there is a certain grade of punishment which, less cruel in appearance, shows just as well the hand of the hangman. The condemned man, it is true, remains at liberty, but he must no longer dream of approaching a lady, nor a courtier, nor a drawing-room, nor an abbey, nor a messroom. Before him on his way all paths are closed or turned aside, and he wanders there without guidance in an invisible prison.’

‘I will bustle about so eagerly that I will get out!’

‘No more than any one else can. M. de Meynières’s son was not more guilty than you. He had, like you, promises, the most reasonable hopes. His father, his majesty’s most devoted servant, repulsed by the king, went, grey hairs and all, not to beg, but to try to persuade the light-of-love. Do you know what she answered? Here are her own words, which Monsieur de Meynières sent me in a letter’:

“The king is the master: he does not think it fitting to show his displeasure with you personally. He is content with making you feel it in depriving your son of a career: to punish you in another fashion would be starting on a long business, and he does not want that. We must respect his wishes. I am sorry for you, however: I sympathize with your grief. I have been a mother; I know what it must cost you to leave your son without a career.”

‘That’s the style of that creature, and you want to throw yourself at her feet!’

‘They are said to be charming, sir.’

‘In faith, yes. She is not pretty, and the king does not love her: that’s common knowledge. He yields, he bends before that woman. To maintain her strange power she must indeed have something else than her wooden head.’

‘They say that she is very witty!’

‘And has no heart, much good that is!’

‘No heart! She who can declaim so finely Voltaire’s verses, sing Rousseau’s music, she who plays Alzire and Colette! It is impossible. I will never believe it.’

‘Go see for yourself, since you want to. I give you advice, not orders, but you’ll get nothing out of it but the expense of your journey. You are deeply in love, then, with Mademoiselle d’Annebault?’

‘More than my life.’

‘Go, sir.’

III

Some have said that travel is harmful to love because it provides distractions: some have said, too, that it strengthens love because it leaves time for dreaming. The chevalier was too young for such learned distinctions. Tired of the coach, half-way there, he had taken a post nag, and so arrived about five in the evening at the sign of the Sun, an out-of-date inn of the time of Louis XIV.

There was at Versailles an old priest who had been curé near Neauflette; the chevalier knew him and loved him. This curé, simple and poor, had a well-placed nephew, an abbé of the Court, who might prove useful. The chevalier went then to the nephew, and he, a man of importance, sunk in his clerical neck- cloth, received the new-comer very kindly, and did not disdain to listen to his request.