“I would die to do it.”

“We wish you to do what may be harder.  We wish you to live to do it.”

“Ah!” She glanced from one to the other with questioning eyes.

“My daughter,” said Bossuet solemnly, leaning forward, with his broad white hand outstretched and his purple pastoral ring sparkling in the sunlight, “it is time for plain speaking.  It is in the interests of the Church that we do it.  None hear, and none shall ever hear, what passes between us now.  Regard us, if you will, as two confessors, with whom your secret is inviolable.  I call it a secret, and yet it is none to us, for it is our mission to read the human heart.  You love the king.”

“Your Grace!” She started, and a warm blush, mantling up in her pale cheeks, deepened and spread until it tinted her white forehead and her queenly neck.

“You love the king.”

“Your Grace—­father!” She turned in confusion from one to the other.

“There is no shame in loving, my daughter.  The shame lies only in yielding to love.  I say again that you love the king.”

“At least I have never told him so,” she faltered.

“And will you never?”

“May heaven wither my tongue first!”

“But consider, my daughter.  Such love in a soul like yours is heaven’s gift, and sent for some wise purpose.  This human love is too often but a noxious weed which blights the soil it grows in, but here it is a gracious flower, all fragrant with humility and virtue.”

“Alas!  I have tried to tear it from my heart.”

“Nay; rather hold it firmly rooted there.  Did the king but meet with some tenderness from you, some sign that his own affection met with an answer from your heart, it might be that this ambition which you profess would be secured, and that Louis, strengthened by the intimate companionship of your noble nature, might live in the spirit as well as in the forms of the Church.  All this might spring from the love which you hide away as though it bore the brand of shame.”

The lady half rose, glancing from the prelate to the priest with eyes which had a lurking horror in their depths.

“Can I have understood you!” she gasped.  “What meaning lies behind these words?  You cannot counsel me to—­”

The Jesuit had risen, and his spare figure towered above her.

“My daughter, we give no counsel which is unworthy of our office.  We speak for the interests of Holy Church, and those interests demand that you should marry the king.”

“Marry the king!” The little room swam round her.  “Marry the king!”

“There lies the best hope for the future.  We see in you a second Jeanne d’Arc, who will save both France and France’s king.”

Madame sat silent for a few moments.  Her face had regained its composure, and her eyes were bent vacantly upon her tapestry frame as she turned over in her mind all that was involved in the suggestion.