“Say, Sire?” echoed the minister, struggling to conceal his consternation under an affected gaiety; “I should probably be of the same opinion as the rest of your subjects.”

[Illustration:  GABRIELLE D’ESTREES. [Paris Richard Bentley and Son 1890]]

The King had, however, made so violent an effort over himself, in order to test the amount of forbearance which he might anticipate in his favourite counsellor, and was so desirous to ascertain his real sentiments upon this important subject, that he exclaimed impatiently:  “I command you to speak freely; you have acquired the right to utter unpalatable truths; do not, therefore, fear that I shall take offence whenever our conversation is purely confidential, although I should assuredly resent such a liberty in public.”

The reply of the upright minister, thus authorized, was worthy alike of the monarch who had made such an appeal, and of the man to whom it was addressed.  He placed before the eyes of his royal master the opprobrium with which an alliance of the nature at which he had hinted must inevitably cover his own name, and the affront it would entail upon every sovereign in Europe.  He reminded him also that the legitimation of the sons of Madame de Beaufort, and the extraordinary and strictly regal ceremonies which he had recently permitted at the baptism of the younger of the two (throughout the whole of which the infant had been recognized as a prince of the blood-royal, although the King had himself refused to allow the registry of the proceedings until they were revised, and the obnoxious passages rescinded), could not fail, should she ever become Queen of France, in the event of her having other children, to plunge the nation into those very struggles for the succession from which he had just declared his anxiety to preserve it.

“And this strife, Sire,” he concluded fearlessly, “would be even more formidable and more frightful than that to which you so anxiously alluded; for you will do well to remember that not only the arena in which it must take place will be your own beloved kingdom of France, while the whole of civilised Europe stands looking on, but that it will be a contest between the son of M. de Liancourt and the King’s mistress—­the son of Madame de Monceaux, the divorced wife of an obscure noble, and the declared favourite of the sovereign; and, finally, between these, the children of shame, and the Dauphin of France, the son of Henri IV and his Queen.  I leave you, Sire, to reflect upon this startling fact before I venture further.”

“And you do well,” said the monarch, as he turned away; “for truly you have said enough for once.” [44]