ng, only
more timid in its nature. Oh! how she would devour his letter, how eager
she would be to answer it! and when the messenger who had brought it had
left her, how she would kiss it, read it over and over again, press to
her heart the lucky paper which would have brought her ease of mind,
tranquillity, and perfect happiness. At all events, if the king did not
come, if the king did not write, he could not do otherwise than send
Saint-Aignan, or Saint-Aignan could not do otherwise than come of his
own accord. Even if it were a third person, how openly she would speak
to him; the royal presence would not be there to freeze her words upon
her tongue, and then no suspicious feeling would remain a moment longer
in the king's heart.

Everything with La Valliere, heart and look, body and mind, was
concentrated in eager expectation. She said to herself that there was an
hour left in which to indulge hope; that until midnight struck, the
king might come, or write or send; that at midnight only would every
expectation vanish, every hope be lost. Whenever she heard any stir in
the palace, the poor girl fancied she was the cause of it; whenever
she heard any one pass in the courtyard below she imagined they were
messengers of the king coming to her. Eleven o'clock struck, then a
quarter-past eleven; then half-past. The minutes dragged slowly on
in this anxiety, and yet they seemed to pass too quickly. And now, it
struck a quarter to twelve. Midnight--midnight was near, the last, the
final hope that remained. With the last stroke of the clock, the last
ray of light seemed to fade away; and with the last ray faded her final
hope. And so, the king himself had deceived her; it was he who had been
the first to fail in keeping the oath which he had sworn that very day;
twelve hours only between his oath and his perjured vow; it as not long,
alas! to have preserved the illusion. And so, not only did the king not
love her, but he despised her whom every one ill-treated, he despised
her to the extent even of abandoning her to the shame of an expulsion
which was equivalent to having an ignominious sentence passed on her;
and yet, it was he, the king himself, who was the first cause of this
ignominy. A bitter smile, the only symptom of anger which during this
long conflict had passed across the angelic face, appeared upon her
lips. What, in fact, now remained on earth for her, after the king was
lost to her? Nothing. But Heaven still rema