A woman had darted through the open door, and had caught the upraised wrist. There was a moment's struggle, two queenly figures swayed and strained, and the knife dropped between their feet. The frightened Louis caught it up, and seizing his little son by the wrist, he rushed from the apartment. Francoise de Montespan staggered back against the ottoman to find herself confronted by the steady eyes and set face of that other Francoise, the woman whose presence fell like a shadow at every turn of her life.
"I have saved you, madame, from doing that which you would have been the first to bewail."
"Saved me! It is you who have driven me to this!"
The fallen favourite leaned against the high back of the ottoman, her hands resting behind her upon the curve of the velvet. Her lids were half closed on her flashing eyes, and her lips just parted to show a gleam of her white teeth. Here was the true Francoise de Montespan, a feline creature crouching for a spring, very far from that humble and soft-spoken Francoise who had won the king back by her gentle words. Madame de Maintenon's hand had been cut in the struggle, and the blood was dripping down from the end of her fingers, but neither woman had time to spare a thought upon that. Her firm gray eyes were fixed upon her former rival as one fixes them upon some weak and treacherous creature who may be dominated by a stronger will.
"Yes, it is you who have driven me to this--you, whom I picked up when you were hard pressed for a crust of bread or a cup of sour wine. What had you? You had nothing--nothing except a name which was a laughing-stock. And what did I give you? I gave you everything. You know that I gave you everything. Money, position, the entrance to the court. You had them all from me. And now you mock me!"
"Madame, I do not mock you. I pity you from the bottom of my heart."
"Pity? Ha! ha! A Mortemart is pitied by the widow Scarron! Your pity may go where your gratitude is, and where your character is. We shall be troubled with it no longer then."
"Your words do not pain me."
"I can believe that you are not sensitive."
"Not when my conscience is at ease."
"Ah! it has not troubled you, then?"
"Not upon this point, madame."
"My God! How terrible must those other points have been!"
"I have never had an evil thought towards you."
"None towards me? Oh, woman, woman!"
"What have I done, then? The king came to my room to see the children taught. He stayed. He talked. He asked my opinion on this and that. Could I be silent? or could I say other than what I thought?"
"You turned him against me!"
"I should be proud indeed if I thought that I had turned him to virtue."
"The word comes well from your lips."
"I would that I heard it upon yours."
"And so, by your own confession, you stole the king's love from me, most virtuous of widows!"
"I had all gratitude and kindly thought for you. You have, as you have so often reminded me, been my benefactress. It was not necessary for you to say it, for I had never for an instant forgotten it. Yet if the king has asked me what I thought, I will not deny to you that I have said that sin is sin, and that he would be a worthier man if he shook off the guilty bonds which held him."
"Or exchanged them for others."
"For those of duty."
"Pah! Your hypocrisy sickens me! If you pretend to be a nun, why are you not where the nuns are? You would have the best of two worlds-- would you not?--have all that the court can give, and yet ape the manners of the cloister. But you need not do it with me! I know you as your inmost heart knows you. I was honest, and what I did, I did before the world. You, behind your priests and your directors and your _prie-dieus_ and your missals--do you think that you deceive me, as you deceive others?"
Her antagonist's gray eyes sparkled for the first time, and she took a quick step forward, with one white hand half lifted in rebuke.
"You may speak as you will of me," said she. "To me it is no more than the foolish paroquet that chatters in your ante-room.