"Parties will not be wanting, monsieur le cardinal," replied Monsieur, with a bonhomie worthy of one tradesman congratulating another.
"I hope not, monseigneur, and with reason, as God has been pleased to give them grace, intelligence, and beauty."
During this conversation, Louis XIV., conducted by Madame, accomplished, as we have described, the circle of presentations.
"Mademoiselle Auricule," said the princess, presenting to his majesty a fat, fair girl of two-and-twenty, who at a village fete might have been taken for a peasant in Sunday finery,--"the daughter of my music-mistress."
The king smiled. Madame had never been able to extract four correct notes from either viol or harpsichord.
"Mademoiselle Aure de Montalais," continued Madame; "a young lady of rank, and my good attendant."
This time it was not the king that smiled; it was the young lady presented, because, for the first time in her life, she heard, given to her by Madame, who generally showed no tendency to spoil her, such an honorable qualification.
Our old acquaintance Montalais, therefore, made his majesty a profound courtesy, the more respectful from the necessity she was under of concealing certain contractions of her laughing lips, which the king might not have attributed to their real cause.
It was just at this moment that the king caught the word which startled him.
"And the name of the third?" asked Monsieur.
"Mary, monseigneur," replied the cardinal.
There was doubtless some magical influence in that word, for, as we have said, the king started in hearing it, and drew Madame towards the middle of the circle, as if he wished to put some confidential question to her, but, in reality, for the sake of getting nearer to the cardinal.
"Madame, my aunt," said he, laughing, and in a suppressed voice, "my geography-master did not teach me that Blois was at such an immense distance from Paris."
"What do you mean, nephew?" asked Madame.
"Why, because it would appear that it requires several years, as regards fashion, to travel the distance!--Look at those young ladies!"
"Well; I know them all."
"Some of them are pretty."
"Don't say that too loud, monsieur my nephew; you will drive them wild."
"Stop a bit, stop a bit, dear aunt!" said the king, smiling; "for the second part of my sentence will serve as a corrective to the first. Well, my dear aunt, some of them appear old and others ugly, thanks to their ten-year-old fashions."