-book and drew out of it a paper folded in the form of a letter,
somewhat yellow, perhaps, but one that must have been most precious,
since the intendant smiled as he looked at it; he then bent a look, full
of hatred, upon the charming group which the young girl and the king
formed together--a group revealed but for a moment, as the light of the
approaching torches shone upon it. Louis noticed the light reflected
upon La Valliere's white dress. "Leave me, Louise," he said, "for some
one is coming."

"Mademoiselle, mademoiselle, some one is coming," cried Colbert, to
expedite the young girl's departure.

Louise disappeared rapidly among the trees; and then, as the king, who
had been on his knees before the young girl, was rising from his humble
posture, Colbert exclaimed, "Ah! Mademoiselle de la Valliere has let
something fall."

"What is it?" inquired the king.

"A paper--a letter--something white; look there, sire."

The king stooped down immediately and picked up the letter, crumpling it
in his hand, as he did so; and at the same moment the torches arrived,
inundating the blackness of the scene with a flood of light as bight as
day.

Chapter XVI. Jealousy.

The torches we have just referred to, the eager attention every one
displayed, and the new ovation paid to the king by Fouquet, arrived in
time to suspend the effect of a resolution which La Valliere had already
considerably shaken in Louis XIV.'s heart. He looked at Fouquet with a
feeling almost of gratitude for having given La Valliere an opportunity
of showing herself so generously disposed, so powerful in the influence
she exercised over his heart. The moment of the last and greatest
display had arrived. Hardly had Fouquet conducted the king towards
the chateau, when a mass of fire burst from the dome of Vaux, with a
prodigious uproar, pouring a flood of dazzling cataracts of rays on
every side, and illumining the remotest corners of the gardens. The
fireworks began. Colbert, at twenty paces from the king, who was
surrounded and _feted_ by the owner of Vaux, seemed, by the obstinate
persistence of his gloomy thoughts, to do his utmost to recall Louis's
attention, which the magnificence of the spectacle was already, in his
opinion, too easily diverting. Suddenly, just as Louis was on the point
of holding it out to Fouquet, he perceived in his hand the paper which,
as he believed, La Valliere had dropped at his feet as she hurried away.
The still str