Ten Years Later: Louise de la Valliere by Alexandre Dumas Chapter 22 Page 5

her ease. In the meantime the king, seated in the front seat of his carriage, the back of which he had yielded up to the two queens, was a prey to that feverish contrariety experienced by anxious lovers, who, without being able to quench their ardent thirst, are ceaselessly desirous of seeing the loved object, and then go away partially satisfied, without perceiving they have acquired a more insatiable thirst than ever. The king, whose carriage headed the procession, could not from the place he occupied perceive the carriages of the ladies and maids of honor, which followed in a line behind it.

Besides, he was obliged to answer the eternal questions of the young queen, who, happy to have with her “her dear husband,” as she called him in utter forgetfulness of royal etiquette, invested him with all her