“Ah, sire!” she cried.  “Sire!  If you could see me now!”

And at the cry and at the sight of that fair pale face, De Catinat, looking down from the window, was stricken as though by a dagger; for there, standing beside the headsman’s block, was she who had been the most powerful, as well as the wittiest and the fairest, of the women of France—­none other than Francoise de Montespan, so lately the favourite of the king.

CHAPTER XIX.

IN THE KING’S CABINET.

On the night upon which such strange chances had befallen his messengers, the king sat alone in his cabinet.  Over his head a perfumed lamp, held up by four little flying Cupids of crystal, who dangled by golden chains from the painted ceiling, cast a brilliant light upon the chamber, which was flashed back twenty-fold by the mirrors upon the wall.  The ebony and silver furniture, the dainty carpet of La Savonniere, the silks of Tours, the tapestries of the Gobelins, the gold-work and the delicate chinaware of Sevres—­the best of all that France could produce was centred between these four walls.  Nothing had ever passed through that door which was not a masterpiece of its kind.  And amid all this brilliance the master of it sat, his chin resting upon his hands, his elbows upon the table, with eyes which stared vacantly at the wall, a moody and a solemn man.

But though his dark eyes were fixed upon the wall, they saw nothing of it.  They looked rather down the long vista of his own life, away to those early years when what we dream and what we do shade so mistily into one another.  Was it a dream or was it a fact, those two men who used to stoop over his baby crib, the one with the dark coat and the star upon his breast, whom he had been taught to call father, and the other one with the long red gown and the little twinkling eyes?  Even now, after more than forty years, that wicked, astute, powerful face flashed up, and he saw once more old Richelieu, the great unanointed king of France.  And then the other cardinal, the long lean one who had taken his pocket-money, and had grudged him his food, and had dressed him in old clothes.  How well he could recall the day when Mazarin had rouged himself for the last time, and how the court had danced with joy at the news that he was no more!  And his mother, too, how beautiful she was, and how masterful!  Could he not remember how bravely she had borne herself during that war in which the power of the great nobles had been broken, and how she had at last lain down to die, imploring the priests not to stain her cap-strings with their holy oils!  And then he thought of what he had done himself, how he had shorn down his great subjects until, instead of being like a tree among saplings, he had been alone, far above all others, with his shadow covering the whole land.  Then there were his wars and his laws and his treaties.  Under his care France had overflowed her frontiers