“The name of Valois, sire, is sufficiently illustrious not to have escaped your memory.”
“Ah!” cried Louis, with a shout of laughter, “I know now whom you mean. La petite Valois, is it not?—a countess of something or other.”
“Precisely, De la Motte; her husband is a gendarme.”
“And his wife is an intrigante. Oh! you need not trouble yourself about her: she is moving heaven and earth; she worries my ministers, she teases my aunts, and overwhelms me with supplications, memorials, and genealogies.”
“Well, then, I ask an honorable pension for her and a regiment for her husband. In fact, a decent position for this branch of the royal family.”
“An honorable pension? Mon Dieu! how you run on, madame. Do you know what a terrible hole this winter has made in my funds? A regiment for this little gendarme, who speculated in marrying a Valois? Why, I have no regiments to give, even to those who deserve them, or who can pay for them. An income befitting a Valois for these people? when we, monarch as we are, have not one befitting a rich gentleman. Why, M. d’Orleans has sent his horses and mules to England for sale, and has cut off a third of his establishment. I have put down my wolf-hounds, and given up many other things. We are all on the privation list, great and small.”
“But these Valois must not die of hunger.”
“Have you not just given them one hundred louis?”
“No, I will not bind myself to anything fixed; they will not let me forget them, and I will give when I have money to spare. I do not think much of this little Valois.”
Saying these words, Louis held out his hand to the queen, who, however, turned from him and said, “No, you are not good to me, and I am angry.”
“You bear malice,” said the king “and I——”
“Oh, you shut the gates against me; you come at half-past six to my room, and force open the door in a passion.”
“What will you give me if I prove that I was not, even when I came in?”
“Oh, it is very easy; I have it in my pocket.”
“Bah!” said the queen; but adding, with curiosity, “You have brought something to give me, but I warn you I shall not believe you, unless you show it me at once.”
Then, with a smile full of kindness, the king began searching in his pockets, with that slowness which makes the child doubly impatient for his toy, the animal for his food, and the woman for her present: at last he drew out a box of red morocco leather, artistically ornamented in gold.