![]() Monsieur mon beau frere, estant par la permission de Dieu– ![]() To Henri III, the Most Christian King of France. Sighing, she dipped her pen in ink and began to write. She rubbed her eyes, which were heavy-lidded and had traces of exhaustion under them, with that incongruously slender-fingered, elegantly ringed hand. It lay softly against them, tracing and revealing every hollow. The skin no longer stretched taut against the high cheekbones, the long, imperious nose, the almond-shaped eyes. But up closer, although the outlines of the beauty were still there, within the frame of the old loveliness there were lines and bumps and sags. From across the room, with only one candle for illumination, the woman’s face looked as young as the hand. She held its left side down with her hand-a white hand with long, slender fingers, which the French poet Ronsard had once described as “a tree with uneven branches.” The hand looked young, as if it belonged to a virgin of fifteen. ![]() She put that one candle at her right hand, and spread out a piece of paper as slowly as possible across the desktop, so as to make no noise. In the deepest part of the night, when all the candles save one had been put out and everyone lay quiet, the woman crossed silently to her desk and sat down. ![]()
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