At about nine in the morning, the hour of her reception, Jeanne Vaubernier, to give her her true name, stepped out of her couch, wrapped in an embroidered gauze gown which allowed a glimpse through the floating lace of her alabaster arms. This seductive statue, awakening more and more, drew a lace mantle over her shoulders and held out her little foot for a slipper which, with its jewels, would enrich a woodcutter in her native woods had he found it.
"Any news of Chon, or the Viscount Jean?" she asked at once of her chambermaid.
"What a bore to be kept waiting!" pouted the royal pet, with a pretty wry face. "Will they never invent a method of corresponding a hundred miles apart? Faith, I pity anybody I visit with my vexation this day. But I suppose that, as this star the dauphiness is coming, I, the poor glowworm, will be left alone. Who is waiting, tell me?"
"Duke Daiguillon, Prince Soubise, Count Sartines and President Maupeou."
"No more than yesterday. That political weathercock has turned from me. He is afraid to be injured, Doris. You must send to his house to ask after him."
The Fifteenth Louis entered the room with a smile on his lips and his head upright. He was accompanied solely by a gentleman in black, who tried by a smile to counteract the baleful effect of thin, hard lips and severe gray eyes. It was Lieutenant of Police Sartines.
The waiting maid and a little negro boy were in the room; but they were not counted.
"Good-morning, countess," hailed the monarch; "how fresh we are looking to-day. Don't be afraid of Sartines; he is not going to talk business, I trust. Oh, how magnificent Zamore is looking!"
The blackamoor was appareled with the barbaric splendor in which Othello was attired at that period.
"Sire, he has a favor to crave of your Majesty."
"He seems to me very ambitious, after having been granted by you the greatest boon one can desire--being your slave, like myself."
Sartines bowed, smiling, but bit his lips at the same time.
"How delightful you are, sire," said the countess. "I adore you, France!" she whispered in the royal ear, and set him smiling.
"You will be paying him in advance; that is a good way of not being treated with ingratitude."
"Capital idea! What do you think, Sartines?" asked the king.