“That which I am aware will prove less acceptable to the King than to myself, M. le Ministre; but which I nevertheless persist in demanding, since I am authorized by your inquiry to repeat my request.  I desire immediate permission to leave France with my parents, my brother, and my children, and to take up my permanent residence in some other country, where I shall have excited less jealousy and less malevolence than in this; and I include my brother in this voluntary expatriation because I now have reason to believe that he is suffering entirely for my sake.”

Sully was startled:  he could not place faith in her sincerity, and he consequently induced her to repeat her request more than once; until she at length added a condition which convinced him that she was indeed perfectly serious in the desire that she expressed.

“Do not, however, imagine, Monsieur,” she said, with a significant smile, “that I have any intention of leaving the kingdom, and taking up my abode with strangers, with the slightest prospect of dying by hunger.  I am by no means inclined to afford such a gratification to the Queen, who would doubtlessly rejoice to learn that this had been the close of my career.  I must have an income of a hundred thousand francs, fully and satisfactorily secured to me in land, before I leave France; and this is a mere trifle compared with what I have a legal right to demand from the King.”

“I shall submit your proposition to his Majesty, Madame,” said the minister as he rose to take his leave; “and will shortly acquaint you with the result.”

Greatly to the disappointment of M. de Sully, however, he found Henry decidedly averse to the departure of Madame de Verneuil; nor could all the arguments by which he endeavoured to convince the infatuated monarch that the self-exile of the Marquise was calculated to ensure his own future tranquillity, avail to overcome his distaste to the proposal.[278] He was weary of his purely sensual intercourse with Madame de Moret, whose extreme facility had caused him from the first to attach but little value to her possession; while her total want of intellect and knowledge of the world continually caused him to remember with regret the dazzling although dangerous qualities of her predecessor.  Marie de Medicis, moreover, who had originally looked with complacency upon his liaison with Mademoiselle de Bueil, rejoicing in any event which tended to estrange his affections from the Marquise, had, since her melodramatic marriage and her accession of rank, begun to entertain apprehensions that another formidable rival was about to embitter her future life; while the reproaches which she constantly addressed to the monarch, and to which he was compelled to submit, on the subject of a woman who had merely pleased his fancy without touching his heart, were another cause of irritation, and only tended to make him look back upon the past with an ardent longing to repair it.  Thus he