The pretext of urgent business easily procured for her a private interview with the King, for the name of D’Estrees still acted like a spell upon the mind and heart of Henry, and the Duchess was a consummate tactician.  Notice was given to her of the day on which the sovereign would visit St. Denis; and as she presented herself in the lateral chapel where he had just concluded his devotions, Henry made a sign for his attendant nobles to withdraw, when the Duchess found herself in a position to explain her errand, and to assure him that she had only been induced to make the present disclosure from her affection for his person, and the gratitude which she owed to him for the many benefits that she had experienced from his condescension.  Having briefly dwelt on the contents of the letters which she delivered into his keeping, she did not even seek an excuse for the means by which they had come into her own possession, but concluded by observing:  “I could not reconcile it to my conscience, Sire, to conceal so great an outrage; I should have felt like a criminal myself, had I been capable of suffering in silence such treason against the greatest king, the best master, and the most gallant gentleman on earth.” [163]

Henry was not proof against this compliment.  He believed himself to be all that the Duchess had asserted, but he liked to hear his own opinion confirmed by the lips of others; and, although smarting under the mortification of wounded vanity occasioned by the contents of the letters of his perfidious mistress, he smiled complacently upon Madame de Villars, thanking her for her zeal and attachment to his person, and assuring her that both were fully appreciated.

She had no sooner retired than, as the Queen had previously done, he repeatedly read over each letter in turn until his patience gave way under the task; when hastily summoning the Duc de Lude, he desired him to forthwith proceed to the apartments of the Marquise, and inform her in his name that “she was a perfidious woman, a monster, and the most wicked of her sex; and that he was resolved never to see her again.” [164]

At this period Madame de Verneuil had quitted the palace, and was residing in an hotel in the city, which had been presented to her by the King:  a fortunate circumstance for the envoy, who required time and consideration to enable him to execute his onerous mission in a manner that might not tend to his own subsequent discomfiture; but on the delivery of the royal message, which even the courtly De Lude could not divest of its offensive character, Madame de Verneuil (who was well aware that the King, however he might yield to his momentary anger, was even less able to dispense with her society than she herself was to lose the favour which alone preserved her from the ignominy her conduct had justly merited) did not for an instant lose her self-possession.  “Tell his Majesty,” she replied, as calmly as though a sense of innocence had given her strength, “that being perfectly assured that I have never been guilty of word or deed which could justly incur his anger, I cannot imagine what can have induced him to treat me with so little consideration.  That some one has traduced me, I cannot doubt; but I shall be revenged by a discovery of the truth.” [165]