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He considered this woman whom Saint-Simon has called "beautiful as the day," and his smile broadened. "Look in your mirror for the alchemy needed there," he bade her. Anger rippled across the perfect face. She lowered "I have looked in vain. Can you not help me, Vanens, you who know so much?" "A love-philtre?" said he, and hummed. "Are you in earnest?" "Do you mock me with that question?
She was fantastically robed in a cloak of crimson velvet, lined with costly furs and closely studded with double-headed eagles in fine gold, which must have been worth a prince's ransom; and she wore red shoes on each of which there was the same eagle design in gold. "Ah, Vanens!" she said familiarly. He bowed. "I bring you," he announced, "a lady who has need of your skill."
Is not my need proclaimed for all to see?" Vanens became grave. "It is not an alchemy in which myself I dabble," he said slowly. "But I am acquainted with those who do." She clutched his wrist in her eagerness. "I will pay well," she said. "You will need to. Such things are costly."
Leaving a heavy purse behind her, as Vanens had instructed her, the Marchioness departed with her escort. And there, with that initiation, as far as we can ascertain, ended Louis de Vanens's connection with the affair. At Clagny Madame de Montespan waited for three days in a fever of impatience for the coming of the witch.
And as she watched, her line of vision was crossed to her undoing by the slender, wellknit figure of de Vanens, who, dressed from head to foot in black, detached sharply from that dazzling throng. His face was pale and saturnine, his eyes dark, very level, and singularly piercing.
And so, one dark night late in the year, Louis de Vanens handed a masked and muffled lady from a coach at the corner of the Rue de la Tannerie, and conducted her to the house of La Voisin.
Their eyes met as he was sauntering past, and with a lazy smile and a languid wave of her fan she beckoned him to her side. "They tell me, Vanens," said she, "that your philosophy succeeds so well that you are transmuting copper into silver." His piercing eyes surveyed her, narrowing; a smile flickered over his thin lips. "They tell you the truth," he said.
The piety in which she had been reared the habits of which clung to her despite the irregularity of her life-made her recoil before the thing that she desired. Sorcery was of the Devil. She told him so. But Vanens laughed. "So that it be effective. . ." said he with a shrug. And then across the room floated a woman's trilling laugh.
She looked in the direction of the sound and beheld the gorgeous figure of the King bending yet haughty and condescending even in adoration over handsome Madame de Ludres. Pride and ambition rose up in sudden fury to trample on religious feeling. Let Vanens take her to this witch of his, for be the aid what it might, she must have it.
"Let me but conquer the secret of solidifying mercury, and the rest is naught. I shall conquer it, and soon." He spoke with easy confidence, a man stating something that he knew beyond the possibility of doubt. The Marquise became thoughtful. She sighed. "You are the master of deep secrets, Vanens. Have you none that will soften flinty hearts, make them responsive?"
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