There was Olympe de Mancini, whose Italian eyes had first taught him that there is a power which can rule over a king; her sister, too, Marie de Mancini; his wife, with her dark little sun-browned face; Henrietta of England, whose death had first shown him the horrors which lie in life; La Valliere, Montespan, Fontanges.

Some were dead; some were in convents.

Some who had been wicked and beautiful were now only wicked.
And what had been the outcome of all this troubled, striving life of his?
He was already at the outer verge of his middle years; he had lost his taste for the pleasures of his youth; gout and vertigo were ever at his foot and at his head to remind him that between them lay a kingdom which he could not hope to govern.

And after all these years he had not won a single true friend, not one, in his family, in his court, in his country, save only this woman whom he was to wed that night.

And she, how patient she was, how good, how lofty! With her he might hope to wipe off by the true glory of his remaining years all the sin and the folly of the past.