s but too
apparent, and did not in reality exist; the poor girl was completely
overwhelmed--the aspect of death itself could not have awakened her from
her torpor. The king saw in her repeated negative replies a mystery full
of unkindness; he began to look all round the apartment with a
suspicious air. There happened to be in La Valliere's room a miniature
of Athos. The king remarked this portrait, which bore a considerable
resemblance to Bragelonne, for it had been taken when the comte was
quite a young man. He looked at it with a threatening air. La Valliere,
in her depressed state of mind, and very far indeed from thinking of
this portrait, could not conjecture the king's preoccupation. And yet
the king's mind was occupied with a terrible remembrance, which had more
than once taken possession of his mind, but which he had always driven
away. He recalled the intimacy which had existed between the two young
people from their birth; the engagement which had followed; and that
Athos had himself come to solicit La Valliere's hand for Raoul. He
therefore could not but suppose that, on her return to Paris, La
Valliere had found news from London awaiting her, and that this news had
counterbalanced the influence which he had been enabled to exert over
her. He immediately felt himself stung, as it were, by feelings of the
wildest jealousy; and he again questioned her, with increased
bitterness. La Valliere could not reply, unless she were to acknowledge
everything, which would be to accuse the queen, and Madame also; and the
consequence would be, that she would have to enter upon an open warfare
with these two great and powerful princesses. She thought within herself
that as she made no attempt to conceal from the king what was passing in
her own mind, the king ought to be able to read in her heart, in spite
of her silence; and that, if he really loved her, he would have
understood and guessed everything. What was sympathy, then, if it were
not that divine flame which possesses the property of enlightening the
heart, and of saving lovers the necessity of an expression of their
thoughts and feelings. She maintained her silence, therefore, satisfying
herself with sighing, weeping, and concealing her face in her hands.
These sighs and tears, which had at first distressed, and then
terrified, Louis XIV., now irritated him. He could not bear any
opposition--not the opposition which tears and sighs exhibited, any more
than opposition