efore others anything like delight at it, well, in that case, the king
will be humiliated before the whole court; and what a delightful story
it will be, too, for him to whom I am really attached, in fact part of
my dowry for my husband, to have the adventure to relate of the monarch
who was so amusingly deceived by a young girl."

"Sire!" exclaimed La Valliere, her mind bewildered, almost wandering,
indeed, "not another word, I implore you; do you not see that you are
killing me?"

"A jest, nothing but a jest," murmured the king, who, however, began to
be somewhat affected.

La Valliere fell upon her knees, and that so violently, that the sound
could be heard upon the hard floor. "Sire," she said, "I prefer shame to
disloyalty."

"What do you mean?" inquired the king, without moving a step to raise
the young girl from her knees.

"Sire, when I shall have sacrificed my honor and my reason both to you,
you will perhaps believe in my loyalty. The tale which was related to
you in Madame's apartments, and by Madame herself, is utterly false; and
that which I said beneath the great oak--"

"Well!"

"That is the only truth."

"What!" exclaimed the king.

"Sire," exclaimed La Valliere, hurried away by the violence of her
emotions, "were I to die of shame on the very spot where my knees are
fixed, I would repeat it until my latest breath; I said that I loved
you, and it is true; I do love you."

"You!"

"I have loved you, sire, from the very first day I ever saw you; from
the moment when at Blois, where I was pining away my existence, your
royal looks, full of light and life, were first bent upon me. I love
you still, sire; it is a crime of high treason, I know, that a poor girl
like myself should love her sovereign, and should presume to tell him
so. Punish me for my audacity, despise me for my shameless immodesty;
but do not ever say, do not ever think, that I have jested with or
deceived you. I belong to a family whose loyalty has been proved, sire,
and I, too, love my king."

Suddenly her strength, voice, and respiration ceased, and she fell
forward, like the flower Virgil alludes to, which the scythe of the
reaper severed in the midst of the grass. The king, at these words, at
this vehement entreaty, no longer retained any ill-will or doubt in
his mind: his whole heart seemed to expand at the glowing breath of an
affection which proclaimed itself in such noble and courageous language.
When, therefore, he h