Sire, you told me once you could not understand why people took kindly to you.  There is in you a gentle dignity and manhood, most royal.  As you come into a room you cast your eyes about unfearing.  Your head and shoulders are erect.  You are like a lion in suppleness and tawny color, which influences me against my will.  You inspire Confidence.  Even girls like Annabel, who feel merely at their finger ends, and are as well satisfied with one husband as another, know you to be solid man, not the mere image of a man.  Besides these traits there is a power going out from you that takes hold of people invisibly.  My father told me there was a man at the court of your father who could put others to sleep by a waving of his hands.  I am not comparing you to this charlatan; yet when you touch my hand a strange current runs through me.

When we were in Paris I used to dress myself every morning like a priestess going to serve in a temple.  And what was it for?  To worship one dear head for half an hour perhaps.

You robbed me of the sight of you for two months.

* * * * *

Sophie Saint-Michel told me to beware of loving a man.  To-day he says, “I love you!  I need you!  I shall go to the devil without you!” To-morrow he turns to his affairs.  In six months he says, “I was a fool!” Next year he says, “Who was it that drove me wild for a time last year?  What was her name?”

* * * * *

Is love a game where men and women try to outwit each other, and man boasts, “She loves me”—­not “I love her”?

You are two persons.  Lazarre belongs to me.  He follows, he thinks about me.  He used to slip past my windows at Lake George, and cast his eyes up at the panes.  But Louis is my sovereign.  He sees and thinks and acts without me, and his lot is apart from mine.

* * * * *

We are in a ship going to the side of the world where you are.  Except that we are going towards you, it is like being pushed off a cliff.  All my faith in the appearances of things is at an end.  I have been juggled with.  I have misjudged.

I could have insisted that we hold Mont-Louis as tenants.  The count is our friend.  It is not a strong man’s fault that a weak man is weak and unfortunate.  Yet seeing Cousin Philippe wince, I could not put the daily humiliation upon him.  He is like my father come back, broken, helpless.  And Paul and I, who are young, must take care of him where he will be least humbled.

I was over-pampered in Mont-Louis and Paris.  I like easy living, carriages, long-tailed gowns, jewels, trained servants, music, and spectacles on the stage; a park and wide lands all my own; seclusion from people who do not interest me; idleness in enjoyment.