Here and there upon the bead work of the native artist, who had made this attire at the expense of so much patient effort, there blazed the changing rays of real gems, diamonds, rubies, emeralds—­every stone known as precious.  As the full bosom of the scornful beauty rose and fell there were cast about in sprays of light the reflections of these gems.  Bracelets of dull, beaten metal hung about her wrists.  In her hair were ornaments of some dull blue stone.  Barbaric, beautiful, fascinating, savage she surely seemed as she met unruffled the startled gaze of these beautiful women of the court, who never, at even the most fanciful bal masque in all Paris, had seen costume like to this.

“Ladies, la voila!” spoke the regent. “Ma belle sauvage!”

The newcomer swept a careless courtesy as she took her seat.  As yet she had spoken no word.  The door at the lower end of the hall opened.

“His Grace le Duc de Richelieu,” announced the attendant, who stood beneath the board.

There advanced into the room, with slouchy, ill-bred carriage, a young man whose sole reputation was that of being the greatest rake in Paris, the Duc de Richelieu, half-gamin, half-nobleman, who counted more victims among titled ladies than he had fingers on his hands, whose sole concern of living was to plan some new impassioned avowal, some new and pitiless abandonment.  This creature, meeting the salute of the regent, and catching at the same moment a view of the regent’s guest, found eyes for nothing else, and stood boldly gazing at the face of her whom Paris knew for the first time and under no more definite title than that of “Belle Sauvage.”

“Pray you, be seated, Monsieur le Duc,” said the regent, calmly, and the latter was wise enough to comply.

“Your Grace,” said Madame de Sabran, “was it not understood that we were to meet to-night none less than the wizard, Monsieur L’as?”

“Monsieur L’as will be with us, and his brother,” replied Philippe.  “But now I ask you to bear witness to the shrewdness of your friend Philippe in entertainment.  I bethought me that, as we were to have with us the master of the Messasebe, it were well to have with us also the typified genius of that same Messasebe.  ’Twas but a little conceit of my own.  And why—­mon enfant, what is it to you?  What do you know of our controller of finance?”

The face of the woman at his right had suddenly gone white with a pallor visible even beneath its rouge and patches.  She half turned, as though to push back her chair from the board, would have arisen, would have spoken perhaps; yet act and gesture were at the time unnoticed.

“His Excellency, Monsieur Jean L’as, le controleur-general,” came the soft tones of the attendant near the door.  “Monsieur Guillaume L’as, brother of the controleur-general.”

The eyes of all were turned toward the door..  Every petted bolle of Paris there assembled shifted bodily in her seat, turning her gaze upon that man whose reputation was the talk of all the realm of France.