one person who saw him dance this evening will not soon forget
him. Do you not think so, La Valliere?"

"Why do you ask me? I did not see him, nor do I know him."

"What! you did not see M. de Saint-Aignan? Don't you know him?"

"No."

"Come, come, do not affect a virtue more extravagantly excessive than
our vanity!--you have eyes, I suppose?"

"Excellent."

"Then you must have seen all those who danced this evening."

"Yes, nearly all."

"That is a very impertinent 'nearly all' for somebody."

"You must take it for what it is worth."

"Very well; now, among all those gentlemen whom you saw, which do you
prefer?"

"Yes," said Montalais, "is it M. de Saint-Aignan, or M. de Guiche, or
M.--"

"I prefer no one; I thought them all about the same."

"Do you mean, then, that among that brilliant assembly, the first court
in the world, no one pleased you?"

"I do not say that."

"Tell us, then, who your ideal is?"

"It is not an ideal being."

"He exists, then?"

"In very truth," exclaimed La Valliere, aroused and excited; "I cannot
understand you at all. What! you who have a heart as I have, eyes as I
have, and yet you speak of M. de Guiche, of M. de Saint-Aignan, when the
king was there." These words, uttered in a precipitate manner, and in
an agitated, fervid tone of voice, made her two companions, between whom
she was seated, exclaim in a manner that terrified her, "_The king!_"

La Valliere buried her face in her hands. "Yes," she murmured; "the
king! the king! Have you ever seen any one to be compared to the king?"

"You were right just now in saying you had excellent eyes, Louise, for
you see a great distance; too far, indeed. Alas! the king is not one
upon whom our poor eyes have a right to hinge themselves."

"That is too true," cried La Valliere; "it is not the privilege of all
eyes to gaze upon the sun; but I will look upon him, even were I to be
blinded in doing so." At this moment, and as though caused by the words
which had just escaped La Valliere's lips, a rustling of leaves, and of
what sounded like some silken material, was heard behind the adjoining
bushes. The young girls hastily rose, almost terrified out of their
senses. They distinctly saw the leaves move, without being able to see
what it was that stirred them.

"It is a wolf or a wild boar," cried Montalais; "fly! fly!" The three
girls, in the extremity of terror, fled by the first path that presented
itself, and did not st