ad struck down with his cane a peacock butterfly, which Monsieur de
Saint-Aignan had picked up from the ground quite stunned.

"You see, Madame," said the king, as he approached her, "that I, too,
am hunting on your behalf!" and then, turning towards those who had
accompanied him, said, "Gentlemen, see if each of you cannot obtain as
much for these ladies," a remark which was a signal for all to retire.
And thereupon a curious spectacle might have been observed; old and
corpulent courtiers were seen running after butterflies, losing their
hats as they ran, and with their raised canes cutting down the myrtles
and the furze, as they would have done the Spaniards.

The king offered Madame his arm, and they both selected, as the center
of observation, a bench with a roof of boards and moss, a kind of hut
roughly designed by the modest genius of one of the gardeners who had
inaugurated the picturesque and fanciful amid the formal style of
the gardening of that period. This sheltered retreat, covered with
nasturtiums and climbing roses, screened the bench, so that the
spectators, insulated in the middle of the lawn, saw and were seen on
every side, but could not be heard, without perceiving those who might
approach for the purpose of listening. Seated thus, the king made a sign
of encouragement to those who were running about; and then, as if he
were engaged with Madame in a dissertation upon the butterfly, which he
had thrust through with a gold pin and fastened on his hat, said to her,
"How admirably we are placed here for conversations."

"Yes, sire, for I wished to be heard by you alone, and yet to be seen by
every one."

"And I also," said Louis.

"My note surprised you?"

"Terrified me rather. But what I have to tell you is more important."

"It cannot be, sire. Do you know that Monsieur refuses to see me?"

"Why so?"

"Can you not guess why?"

"Ah, Madame! in that case we have both the same thing to say to each
other."

"What has happened to you, then?"

"You wish me to begin?"

"Yes, for I have told you all."

"Well, then, as soon as I returned, I found my mother waiting for me,
and she led me away to her own apartments."

"The queen-mother?" said Madame, with some anxiety, "the matter is
serious then."

"Indeed it is, for she told me... but, in the first place, allow me to
preface what I have to say with one remark. Has Monsieur ever spoken to
you about me?"

"Often."

"Has he ever spoken to