ides, we will now try the
experiment for which we came out. Show me the oak. Do you know where it
is?" she continued.

"Alas! Madame, yes."

"And you can find it again?"

"With my eyes shut."

"Very well; sit down on the bank where you were, where La Valliere was,
and speak in the same tone and to the same effect as you did before; I
will conceal myself in the thicket, and if I can hear you, I will tell
you so."

"Yes, Madame."

"If, therefore, you really spoke loud enough for the king to have heard
you, in that case--"

Athenais seemed to await the conclusion of the sentence with some
anxiety.

"In that case," said Madame, in a suffocated voice, arising doubtless
from her hurried progress, "in that case, I forbid you--" And Madame
again increased her pace. Suddenly, however, she stopped. "An idea
occurs to me," she said.

"A good idea, no doubt, Madame," replied Mademoiselle de
Tonnay-Charente.

"Montalais must be as much embarrassed as La Valliere and yourself."

"Less so, for she is less compromised, having said less."

"That does not matter; she will help you, I dare say, by deviating a
little from the exact truth."

"Especially if she knows that your highness is kind enough to interest
yourself about me."

"Very well, I think I have discovered what it is best for you all to
pretend."

"How delightful."

"You had better say that all three of you were perfectly well aware that
the king was behind the tree, or behind the thicket, whichever it might
have been; and that you knew M. de Saint-Aignan was there too."

"Yes, Madame."

"For you cannot disguise it from yourself, Athenais, Saint-Aignan takes
advantage of some very flattering remarks you made about him."

"Well, Madame, you see very clearly that one can be overheard," cried
Athenais, "since M. de Saint-Aignan overheard us."

Madame bit her lips, for she had thoughtlessly committed herself. "Oh,
you know Saint-Aignan's character very well," she said, "the favor the
king shows him almost turns his brain, and he talks at random; not only
so, he very often invents. That is not the question; the fact remains,
did or did not the king overhear?"

"Oh, yes, Madame, he certainly did," said Athenais, in despair.

"In that case, do what I said: maintain boldly that all three of you
knew--mind, all three of you, for if there is a doubt about any one of
you, there will be a doubt about all,--persist, I say, that you knew
that the king and M. d