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"Dear Madama di Thénouris," she said appealingly, "it seems so much the more ungracious on my part. Yet it is treachery to our Queen. And if it should be that Dama Ecciva hath been receiving these letters and holding such part in these intrigues to leave her where she hath free access to the court-circle. But it cannot be true; she is too young to be so faithless!
In the first dazed days that followed, between the necessary adjustment of matters of state, and the many ceremonies incident upon the King's sudden death, there was scant time to discuss the rapid happenings; even in the court-circle they scarcely knew what was passing still less how it had come about.
Oliphant, in her excellent little life of the Queen, says: "The immediate circle of friends around the young sovereign fed her with no flatteries." It is difficult to believe such a statement of any mortal Court-circle.
But, alas, no relation can be left to itself in this world, especially if you have a porous skin! There were other French here, as well as Voltaire, revolving in the Court-circle; and that, beyond all others, proved the fatal circumstance to him.
Always so: always in your utmost radiance of sunshine a shadow; and in your softest outburst of Lydian or Spheral symphonies something of eating Care! Then too, in the Court-circle itself, "is Trajan pleased," or are all things well?
The details of this romantic intrigue were not known until long afterward in the court-circle, except by the few who had intercepted and frustrated the carefully-laid plans; but there were many hints of some concealed happening of deep interest which made delightful themes for romantic conjecture whenever the younger maids of honor found themselves happily without the dignified supervision of the Lady of the Bernardini and Madama di Thénouris, or the equally-to-be-evaded younger maid-of-honor, Margherita de Iblin.
As a child, and as a lad, he was grievously tempted by his father's example, and by the influence of an idolatrous court, which was crowded by flatterers and panderers. The leading spirit of the court-circle was Maachah, "the King's mother," as she is called the Sultana Valide. She was a woman of strong character, and held a high official position.
Meanwhile vigorous efforts were being made to discover the identity of the person addressed as "L'Illustrissima, Madama di Niuna." But no light had been thrown upon the matter, although it had been openly discussed in the court-circle.
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