ger require my eyes, and presence, and care? What sudden cause, what
urgent motive, can determine you to exclude me? Does not, then, the
humiliation which I have suffered for two years any longer satisfy your
aversion?"

"What!" cried the prince, in consternation, "is your resolution no longer
the same? Do you go back upon what you promised to your brother?"

"I do not change my resolution," I resumed at once; "the places which you
inhabit have neither charm nor attraction for my heart, which has always
detested treachery and falseness. I consent to withdraw myself from your
person, but on condition that the odious intriguer who has supplanted me
shall follow the unhappy benefactress who once opened to her the doors of
this palace. I took her from a state of misery, and she plunges daggers
into my breast."

"The Kings of Europe," said the prince, white with agitation and anger,
"have not yet laid down the law to me in my palace; you shall not make me
submit to yours, madame. The person whom, for far too long, you have
been offending and humiliating before my eyes, has ancestors who yield in
nothing to your forefathers, and if you have introduced her to this
palace, you have introduced here goodness, sweetness, talent, and virtue
itself. This enemy, whom you defame in every quarter, and who every day
excuses and justifies you, will abide near this throne, which her fathers
have defended and which her good counsel now defends. In sending you
today from a Court where your presence is without motive and pretext, I
wished to keep from your knowledge, and in kindness withdraw from your
eyes an event likely to irritate you, since everything irritates you.
Stay, madame, stay, since great catastrophes appeal to and amuse you;
after to-morrow you will be more than ever a supernumerary in this
chateau."

At these words I realised that it was a question of the public triumph of
my rival. All my firmness vanished; my heart was, as it were, distorted
with the most rapid palpitations. I felt an icy coldness run through my
veins, and I fell unconscious upon my carpet.

My woman cameo to bring me help, and when my senses returned, I heard the
King saying to my intendant: "All this wearies me beyond endurance; she
must go this very day."

"Yes, I will go," I cried, seizing a dessert-knife which was on my
bureau. I rushed forward with a mechanical movement upon my little Comte
de Toulouse, whom I snatched from the hands of his fathe