CHAPTER XXXIV.

Lovers' Vows.--The Body-guards.--Racine's Phedre.--The
Pit.--Allusions.--The Duel.--M. de Monclar.--The Cowled Spy.--He Escapes
with a Fright.--M. de Monclar in Jersey.--Gratitude of the
Marquise.--Happy Memory.


Lovers, in the effervescence of their passion, exaggerate to themselves
the strength and intensity of their sentiments. The momentary, pleasure
that this agreeable weakness causes them to feel, brings them, in spite
of themselves, to promise a long duration of it, so that they swear
eternal fidelity, a constancy, proof against all, two days after that one
which shone on their most recent infidelity. I had seen the King neglect
and abandon the amiable La Valliere, and I listened to him none the less
credulously and confidently when he said to me: "Athenais, we have been
created for each other: if Heaven were suddenly to deprive me of the
Queen, I would have your marriage dissolved, and, before the altar and
the world, join your destiny, to mine."

Full of these fantastic ideas, in which my, hope and desire and credulity
were centred, I had accepted those body-guards of state who never left my
carriage. The poor Queen had murmured: I had disdained her murmurs. The
public had manifested its disapproval: I had hardened myself and fought
against the insolent opinion of that public. I could not renounce my
chimera of royalty, based on innumerable probabilities, and I used my
guards in anticipation, and as a preliminary.

One of them, one day, almost lost his life in following my carriage,