“Ah! but the Protestants?”

“Bah! have them here as well,” said she, laughing.  “Why, look at Lavalliere, who is suspected to be a Huguenot; he is converted by my dear little Limeuil, who does not play her cards badly for a young lady of sixteen.  He will soon have her name down in his list.”

“Ah, Madame! do not believe it,” said Marie d’Annebaut, “he is ruined through that same sickness of Naples which made you queen.”

At this artless confession, Catherine, the fair Diana, and the king, who were sitting together, burst out laughing, and the thing ran round the room.  This brought endless shame and mockery upon Lavalliere.  The poor gentleman, pointed at by everyone, soon wished somebody else in his shoes, for La Limeuil, who his rivals had not been slow laughingly to warn of her danger, appeared to shrink from her lover, so rapid was the spread, and so violent the apprehensions of this nasty disease.  Thus Lavalliere found himself abandoned by everyone like a leper.  The king made an offensive remark, and the good knight quitted the ball-room, followed by poor Marie in despair at the speech.  She had in every way ruined the man she loved:  she had destroyed his honour, and marred his life, since the physicians and master surgeons advance as a fact, incapable of contradiction, that persons Italianised by this love sickness, lost through it their greatest attractions, as well as their generative powers, and their bones went black.

Thus no woman would bind herself in legitimate marriage with the finest gentlemen in the kingdom if he were only suspected of being one of those whom Master Frances Rabelais named “his very precious scabby ones. . . . .”

As the handsome knight was very silent and melancholy, his companion said to him on the road home from Hercules House, where the fete had been held—­

“My dear lord, I have done you a great mischief.”

“Ah, madame!” replied Lavalliere, “my hurt is curable; but into what a predicament have you fallen?  You should not have been aware of the danger of my love.”

“Ah!” said she, “I am sure now always to have you to myself; in exchange for this great obloquy and dishonour, I will be forever your friend, your hostess, and your lady-love—­more than that, your servant.  My determination is to devote myself to you and efface the traces of this shame; to cure you by a watch and ward; and if the learned in these matters declare that the disease has such a hold of you that it will kill you like our defunct sovereign, I must still have your company in order to die gloriously in dying of your complaint.  Even then,” said she, weeping, “that will not be penance enough to atone for the wrong I have done you.”

These words were accompanied with big tears; her virtuous heart waxed faint, she fell to the ground exhausted.  Lavalliere, terrified, caught her and placed his hand upon her heart, below a breast of matchless beauty.  The lady revived at the warmth of this beloved hand, experiencing such exquisite delights as nearly to make her again unconscious.