"And without
subterfuge! Who was it, sir, whom you saw come from the forest
this morning?"
"Madame?"
"In one word!"
"If your Majesty will--"
"I will permit you to answer," the Queen exclaimed.
"I saw his Majesty return," he faltered--"and M. de Sully."
"Before them! before them!"
"I may have been mistaken."
"Pooh, man!" the Queen cried with biting contempt. "You have
told it to half-a-dozen. Discretion comes a little late."
"Well, if you will, madame," he said, striving to assert himself,
but cutting a poor figure, "I fancied that I saw Madame de Conde
--"
"Come out of the wood ten minutes before the King?"
"It may have been twenty," he muttered.
But the Queen cared no more for him. She turned, looking superb
in her wrath, to the King. "Now, sir!" she said. "Am I to bear
this?"
"Sweet!" the King said, governing his temper in a way that
surprised me, "hear reason, and you shall have it in a word. How
near was Bassompierre to the lady he saw?"
"I was not within fifty paces of her!" the favourite cried
eagerly.
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