In December the Duchesse de Châteauroux, the maîtresse en titre of the King of France, had died, some said of poison, some of a broken heart at her treatment at Metz when she had been driven by her enemies from the sick King’s bedside and from the Court, a few because she had caught a chill and even maîtresses en titre were mortal. Would Louis select another lady to take her place? Who would she be? That was the question. France was at war—that dreary war called in the books the “War of the Austrian Succession”—and this spring—1745—under the Maréchal de Saxe, (the son of a king and Aurora von Konigsmarck, himself the idol of women of quality as he had been the idol of Adrienne Lecouvreur) great efforts were to be made to drive from the Low Countries the red-coated English and white-coated Austrians, to win for the Fleurs-de-Lis the boundaries that, since the days of Henri IV., God, nature, and French genius had destined to be French. Was not Louis, Le Bien Aimé, himself going to the campaign with the flower of his nobility and with his son and heir? Yes, surely great things would be accomplished before the September winds shook the apples off the trees in the orchards of Normandy or they trod the wine-vats on the sun-clad slopes of Gascony. Paris was in a fever of excitement; the Court was still en fête for the marriage of Monsieur le Dauphin to a Saxon princess. But would there be a successor to the hapless Duchesse de Châteauroux? That was the only question about which the Paris that counted really cared.

André of course went to tell St. Benôit how he had won his bet, and he found him gossiping in the salon of the Comtesse des Forges.

“The King has already chosen,” Madame remarked, fanning herself placidly. “But Monseigneur the Archbishop and the royal confessor are still able to work on his remorse, so for the present His Majesty affects to play at being a dévot.”

“I don’t believe it,” St. Benôit retorted. “The King will be a dévot for one day in the week and a lover for the other six, as all kings of France and their subjects, too, ought to be. Naturally he does not wish to shock Madame la Dauphine, but wait till the campaign is over; Mars will give way to Venus, and then we shall have one of the De Nesles back again.”

Whereat Madame lifted her heavy-lidded eyes, of which she was so proud, and said contemptuously, “Pooh!”

“I have won the wager,” André interposed, “and I will undertake to win another. I will bet that it will not be a De Nesles, but a bourgeoise that the King will select.”

“Impossible!” both St. Benôit and Madame cried, genuinely shocked. “A bourgeoise at Versailles! It would be a scandal, unheard of, monstrous, not to be tolerated.”

But André only smiled, and press him as they might he refused to say more.

“Well,” said the Comtesse, “if you will go to-night, my dear De Nérac, to the ball at the Hôtel-de-Ville you will learn whether I am not right.” And after André had taken his leave she turned to St. Benôit, with genuine concern. “England,” she said, “has demoralised our dear friend. The English have made him incredibly vulgar. As if the King of France would so far forget himself or be so impertinent to us as to introduce into our Versailles a bourgeoise. There would be a revolution.”

“I can see you, Madame,” he answered, “giving the lady her footstool.” He kneeled mockingly at her feet. “God bless my soul! you might as well expect me to kiss the hand of your fille de chambre. André was joking; he knows if the King were to bring her to Court she would not stay a week.”

“A week!” Madame threw up her noble head. “Not twenty-four hours.”

But André, who had heard the crystal’s story, had his good reasons. Already fertile schemes were fermenting in his brain; his ambition, too, was daily soaring upwards, and he dimly guessed that in this strange circling of Fortune’s wheel the opportunity for which he thirsted would at last come. And so like the rest of the gay world he went that night to the grand ball given by the municipality of Paris at the Hôtel-de-Ville in honour of the marriage of the Dauphin; for the King had promised to be present, and it was to be one of those rare occasions when the noblesse had consented to rub shoulders with the middle class in doing honour to the royal bride and bridegroom. Coming events were in the air. André felt, though why he could not say, that to-night would somehow prove a decisive turning-point in the history of himself and of France.

For the purpose of dancing, the court of the Hôtel-de-Ville had been converted into a ballroom, superbly festooned and illuminated, and the crowd that had gathered was immense. Nobles of the realm, great ladies, peers, peeresses, and the Court here jostled in the wildest confusion with the gentlemen of the robe, with aldermen, shopkeepers, and even flower girls and the danseuses of the royal ballet. The company was supposed to be masked, but many had already discarded the flimsy covering; and for all who still wore it the disguise was the merest affectation. Most of the ladies of the middle class had donned fancy attire, but the noblesse for the most part showed their quality by refusing to imitate the canaille. André of course was content with his uniform of the Chevau-légers de la Garde, that beautiful and famous livery of scarlet with white facings, silver buttons, spurs of gold, and hat with white plumes which in itself conferred an enviable distinction, and about his neck, more proudly still, he carried that Croix de St. Louis, whose possession sufficed to make any soldier happy.

For a few minutes he stood gazing at the brilliant spectacle presented by the moving throng,—one vast arena of human beings in which the uniforms, the stars and ribbons, the jewels, the bright eyes, and the fair shoulders were blended into a magic and inspiring panorama, over which floated the tender music of harp, violin, and flute. And as he moved slowly forward kissing noble hands, receiving gentle congratulations, or looking into eyes to which in past days he had whispered devotion in the Œil de Bœuf or beneath the balmy fragrance of a fête champêtre at Rambouillet his ambition soared still higher. But dance he would not; he had come to watch, to teach, and to learn. The Chevalier to his joy was not here; he had been despatched, André discovered with grim satisfaction, on special business of the King. But yonder was Denise, holding a miniature court. As André edged his way towards her, her glance fell on the familiar uniform, and it plainly said: “Here at least let us forget the past—I have forgiven you—come let us be friends as we were before.” And André replied to her graceful reverence with his stiffest bow, as he had deliberately come to do, and then moved slowly off, but not before he had marked with a lover’s joy the pained surprise in Denise’s eyes, the angry flush that coloured her cheek. But the lesson must be completed. A partner must be found and at once. He paused—looked about him—started.

“You, Madame!” he ejaculated, checking his astonishment, for Denise was watching him.

“I, Monsieur le Vicomte,” was the serene reply. “This is more fun than spelling the truth from a crystal,” and she laughed wickedly.

Yes, it was indeed the wise woman from “The Cock with the Spurs of Gold,” wearing her diamond cross and dressed in adorably pale blue satin, just such a colour as her eyes covered by the pale blue mask. Strangest of all, André felt at that moment there was not a woman in all this throng who carried herself with more of the true air of the noblesse than did this young sorceress, who plied a charlatan’s trade for hire.

“The Vicomte looks to-night as the Vicomte de Nérac should,” she remarked quietly. “But is it my presence here or is it my perfume that perplexes you?”

And André started again at her unerring divination.

“Surely it is very simple,” she proceeded. “Recall, if you please, a supper party in London—the perfume was there then—now it is here. That is all.”

“What?” He stopped in sheer amazement. “You are that—that woman?”

“Certainly. The same, only a trifle disguised. In London I was dark, in Paris I am fair, because,” she shrugged her shoulders, “I love change and I hate being recognised unless I choose. You will not betray my secret, will you?”

“No. But why are you in Paris?”

“Women like myself,” she answered cynically, “are always dying of ennui, and I was born a Parisienne. Can a Parisienne live without Paris? Well, I cannot. London, mon Dieu! Those suffocating English! They make love as they eat beef and drink beer. Their women are prudes, their men heavy as bull-dogs made of lead. London is a ville de province—no wit, no ideas, no life. Here,” she pointed with her fan, “it is far different. Where will you find the like of that for gaiety of heart, and sparkle of the soul? It is the city of breeding, of philosophers, of poets, of chivalry, and of lovers. Why, that grisette over there can be more spirituelle than an Englishman of genius. And when even the lovers who make love with ardour and in couplets that sing of themselves become annoying I go elsewhere.”

André listened with a puzzled delight. It was not the perfume—it was the mystery that enveloped her which kept him silent. Something in her voice, her manner, reminded him in the most tantalising way of somebody else and for the life of him he could not think who that somebody was.

“No,” she replied to his invitation, “I will not disgrace you by dancing—you the Vicomte de Nérac and I—” she smiled. “Besides you have seen me dance in the only kind of dancing that I care about. But see,” she added, dropping her voice, “do you not recognise a friend, perhaps a partner? Is she not charming—conquering and to conquer?”

“Name of a dog!” he ejaculated.

Away at the other end of the ballroom was a raised dais on which was gathered a bevy of the fairest of the bourgeoisie. One of them, escorted by three or four gentlemen, was descending the stairs into the throng—a woman in the guise of Diana, clad in the airiest, gauziest, purest white, with a silver bow in her hand and a quiver on her shoulder and a jewelled half-moon in her powdered hair. It was—yes, it was—the fair huntress of the woods of Versailles, to-night a matchless spectacle of majestic beauty which rippled over into the gayest, most provocative coquetry imaginable—Juno and Venus and Diana in one and defying you to say which was the more divine. And that cunningly arranged robe of glittering white, with its artful jewels to suggest every curve and line, was just what witchery would have chosen to be the foil to the laughter of her eyes and the subtle sheen of her skin. What other woman could have worn it? But for the one who dared, it was the homage of a woman’s art to the triumph of nature’s womanhood.

André watched her with absorbing interest. Fate had ordained that this woman’s ambitions should be bound up with his. But how? how?

“She has a mind,” his companion was saying, “as well as incomparable beauty. That Abbé at her elbow is Monsieur de Bernis, a poverty-stricken poet who writes her love-letters for her, whom she will make great some day, perhaps, and if Monsieur de Voltaire cared as much for balls as for the muses, he, too, would be snarling his honeyed venom in her ear. She can act and dance and sing. She will not always be Madame d’Étiolles.”

The plans of years were sweeping through André’s brain. What if the crystal—the thought was cut short by a stately flourish of trumpets and the loud hum of applause.

“See,” the sorceress whispered, “the King has arrived.”

Men and women pressed to the entrance and then fell back—on all sides the lowliest reverences. The King, the master of France, had entered and was facing the crowd. And a truly royal figure he made in his splendid dress, for Louis XV. knew how to present himself as a worthy grandson of the Sun God who had created Versailles and made monarchy in Europe sublime: the pose of his handsome head, the dignity of his carriage, the matchless air of command that conveyed an air of majesty such as could only belong to one whose wish since boyhood was law, whose words were orders, whose will was the inspiration of a nation. And when you marked that faint mysterious smile, those blue eyes delicately dull, was he not just like his grandfather, indefinable and impenetrable? What was the real man concealed behind that regal presence? What were the real thoughts masked by that gaze, slightly bored yet caressing and sweet?

“You do not like the King?” André asked quickly, for he had caught behind the pale blue mask a swift glance which sent a shiver down his spine.

“I love him,” she answered, “as all we women do. But I was thinking of the day when I am to be burnt for a witch.”

It was not the truth and André knew it. A woman’s jealousy, he thought—but that, too, he knew it was not.

“My friend,” she said, “go you and salute Madame d’Étiolles. Perhaps you will see something later on to amuse you,” and as if to assist him she glided from him and was lost in the crowd.

She had divined his mind again. To speak with the fair huntress was the resolve that had mastered him. And to his satisfaction Madame no sooner recognised him than she beckoned with her fan, smiling a shy and intoxicating welcome.

André kissed her hand, looking into her eyes, imperial eyes in which slumbered imperial ambitions, such wonderful eyes, now blue, now grey, now softly dark as the violet, now glittering with the lightest mockery. “Un morceau de roi,” he muttered. “Yes, by God! a morceau de roi!”

“Conduct me to yonder pillar,” she said presently, “we can talk better there.”

But that was not her reason, for to reach the pillar they must pass near the King. Clearly Madame d’Étiolles was bent on playing to-night the game of the woods at closer quarters. André as he escorted her now felt that all eyes, including Denise’s, were on him, but he enjoyed it, walking slowly on the giddiest tiptoes of bravado. In front of Louis, he paused to make his reverence. Madame paused too, and as she unslung her quiver to curtsey with more graceful ease André could feel her tremble. The King’s roaming gaze rested on them both. André’s salute he acknowledged with a smile, a word or two of kind greeting, but it was on the jewels on the breast of the huntress that his bored eyes lingered.

“Fair archeress,” he said, “surely the shafts you loose are mortal.”

Madame d’Étiolles flushed with pleasure, curtsied again, and promptly passed on, without attempting to reply.

“Mon Dieu! what a figure! Who the devil is she?” André heard one of the gentlemen of the Chamber mutter.

“You did that to perfection,” his partner whispered by the pillar. “You are a man who understands women, and they are so rare. And now we will dance if you please.”

The sorceress was right. Madame d’Étiolles danced divinely. She had been taught by the best masters, but it was only art that she owed to their science. The rest was her own.

“Will you please do what I tell you?” she whispered as the violins tripped out a stately minuet. “And trust me.”

“Rely on me, Madame,” he answered.

Imperceptibly Madame d’Étiolles in her minuet drew nearer and nearer to the King, who began to observe them closely. A gleam of animation crept into his face and the courtiers parted a little to permit His Majesty a better view of this dainty dancer. Covert whispers, knowing looks, commenced to run through the group. Yes, the King was distinctly interested. But the fair Diana paid no heed. She had only eyes for the superb officer in the scarlet and white of the Chevau-légers de la Garde, who was dancing as he had never danced before.

“Throw your handkerchief,” came the soft command.

Completely puzzled André obeyed as in a dream. His partner caught the handkerchief dexterously on her fan and was rewarded by a ripple of delighted laughter from the spectators.

“A forfeit, Vicomte,” she said loud enough for all to hear, “I give you tit for tat,” and she pressed her own to her lips, and tossed it back to him.

But it was not intended to reach him. The huntress had calculated carefully and the handkerchief lightly hit the King.

A flush shot into Louis’s face; Madame coloured over neck and shoulders, she dropped her eyes, after one swift glance at His Majesty. Silence, save for the dying lullaby of the music. André’s heart beat fast, but not so fast surely as was beating that ambitious heart of the huntress prisoned in its jewels and white satin.

What would the King do? Would he resent or accept the challenge?

Gentlemen and ladies, nobles and bourgeois alike, drew a deep breath. Ah! the King had picked up the handkerchief—a second’s pause, the pause in which a nation’s destiny may be decided—and then the King smilingly threw the handkerchief back, fair and true, at the audacious dancer.

A pent-up cry arose, hands were clapped. “The King has thrown the handkerchief, the King has thrown the handkerchief,” was the ringing sentence on the lips of all.

Madame caught the royal gift and melted into an enchanting reverence. One alluring side-glance under demure eyelashes, a glance of challenge and of submission, and she had taken André’s arm and glided swiftly back to the dais.

“The King has thrown the handkerchief” still rang round the crowded room. But where was the dancer? She was gone—yes, actually gone without waiting to follow up her victory. And of the expectant, excited throng André alone recognised how unerring was her tact. The huntress had accomplished her object. Henceforward it would not be she who must hunt, for defiance to royal hunters can be more triumphant than obedience.

André went over to Madame des Forges and St. Benôit. “You have lost again,” he said, “and you will confess it now.”

“It is infamous,” replied the Comtesse, with fierce indignation. “Infamous! But that grisette has not won yet; the road from the Hôtel-de-Ville to Versailles is long and difficult!”

“Ah, no,” André answered; “not when you can travel in a royal carriage. You will see what you will see when the campaign is over. The bourgeoise before long will have the heel of her slipper on all our necks.”

“And you believe,” said the Comtesse, “that we will permit her to be forced on us. You are as mad as she is.”

She promptly took St. Benôit’s arm to mark her anger at the part André had played. But he only shrugged his shoulders in infinite amusement. A week ago, true enough, he had scorned to lend himself to such tactics, but to-night he was insensible to the reproach that his noble blood should have felt. For he, too, was under the spell of fate and of a witchery far more potent than the drug of any magician. It was not in mortal man to resist the sorcery of that fair huntress who played on human and royal passion as a musician on a stringed instrument. But there was more than mere passion in that dainty wimple of cambric and lace: “La Petite d’Étiolles” was gambling for a great stake. What if she were to be his ally in his great game? Before André there unrolled a wonderful vision of the future. He was necessary to these women. Bien! They should be necessary to him, and bitter as was the contempt in Denise’s pure eyes it only steeled his determination remorselessly to tread the path he had planned towards his goal—Denise.

The King had lost his interest and left the ball. He had entered it a free man; he left it in thraldom. And all Paris knew now that for good or evil the reversed crown of the Duchesse de Châteauroux lay in the lap of another. How long would she be permitted to wear it?

As André hastened to leave, a touch was laid on his arm. “Do you believe in the crystal now?” asked a gently derisive voice.

Ah! the sorceress! he had forgotten her. “You are a true witch,” he said, “you will certainly be burnt. But I thank you.”

“I understand,” she replied and she took the arm he offered. They walked in silence in search of her carriage.

“Why do you hate politics?” André demanded suddenly.

“Because,” she answered slowly, “it is the women to whom politics are a passion who ruin kingdoms.” The vehemence of the reply was as surprising as its nature. “Women,” she added, “governed the great Louis Quatorze, they corrupted the Regent, they will bring our sovereign and his kingdom to be the scorn of the world. Better a hundred witches, a hundred wantons, than one woman whose passion it is to govern a kingdom through its King. That is the woman who should be burnt.”

It was a new idea to André: it would have been a new idea to the salons of the Faubourg St. Germain, to the galleries of Versailles.

“Yes,” she continued, “when a woman is not content to be a wife and a mother she deserves to be treated only as the idol of an hour, the pastime of a fleeting passion.”

“O Madame!”

“O Monsieur!” she retorted. “Believe me, it is pleasanter for the women in the end and better for the men that such women should be denied everything except that for which they live—pleasure.”

They had reached the carriage.

“Do you remember the pay for which you asked?” he questioned, taking her hand.

“Yes, I can never forget it.”

“Then——”

She stepped serenely into the carriage. “Then,” she whispered, “I shall get it, I suppose, when I really want it,” and she swiftly shut the door in his face. “Drive to the hotel of the Duc de Pontchartrain,” was her order.

André swore softly. The Duke was his friend and also perhaps the greatest libertine in Paris. She should not escape him. In a quarter of an hour he was supping with the Duke and his merry crew; women there were in plenty, but this sorceress, the daughter of a Paris flower girl, had neither been invited nor had so much as exchanged a word with his grace. And when André, weary of lansquenet, ribald songs, and copious toasts, slunk to bed with the rising sun he was strangely glad that she had tricked him. But if she was not what she so cynically professed to be what did it mean? And why in her presence did he always have that irritating feeling that somewhere and somehow he had met her before?