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CHAPTER IX.
HATE IS AS STRONG AS LOVE.
Queen Anne had several of these low voices about her. Barkilphedro was
one.
Besides the queen, he secretly worked, influenced, and plotted upon Lady
Josiana and Lord David. As we have said, he whispered in three ears, one
more than Dangeau. Dangeau whispered in but two, in the days when,
thrusting himself between Louis XIV., in love with Henrietta, his
sister-in-law, and Henrietta, in love with Louis XIV., her
brother-in-law, he being Louis's secretary, without the knowledge of
Henrietta, and Henrietta's without the knowledge of Louis, he wrote the
questions and answers of both the love-making marionettes.
Barkilphedro was so cheerful, so accepting, so incapable of taking up
the defence of anybody, possessing so little devotion at bottom, so
ugly, so mischievous, that it was quite natural that a regal personage
should come to be unable to do without him. Once Anne had tasted
Barkilphedro she would have no other flatterer. He flattered her as they
flattered Louis the Great, by stinging her neighbours. "The king being
ignorant," says Madame de Montchevreuil, "one is obliged to mock at the
savants."
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