n of Blois! It is enough to
make one despair!"

"Console yourself, mademoiselle."

"Well, so let it be! After all, so much the worse for those who do not
find me to their taste!" said Montalais philosophically.

"They would be very difficult to please," replied Raoul, faithful to his
regular system of gallantry.

"Thank you, Monsieur le Vicomte. We were saying, then, that the king is
coming to Blois?"

"With all the court."

"Mesdemoiselles de Mancini, will they be with them?"

"No, certainly not."

"But as the king, it is said, cannot do without Mademoiselle Mary?"

"Mademoiselle, the king must do without her. M. le Cardinal will have it
so. He has exiled his nieces to Brouage."

"He!--the hypocrite!"

"Hush!" said Louise, pressing a finger on her friend's rosy lips.

"Bah! nobody can hear me. I say that old Mazarino Mazarini is a
hypocrite, who burns impatiently to make his niece Queen of France."

"That cannot be, mademoiselle, since M. le Cardinal, on the contrary,
has brought about the marriage of his majesty with the Infanta Maria
Theresa."

Montalais looked Raoul full in the face, and said, "And do you Parisians
believe in these tales? Well! we are a little more knowing than you, at
Blois."

"Mademoiselle, if the king goes beyond Poitiers and sets out for Spain,
if the articles of the marriage contract are agreed upon by Don Luis de
Haro and his eminence, you must plainly perceive that it is not child's
play."

"All very fine! but the king is king, I suppose?"

"No doubt, mademoiselle; but the cardinal is the cardinal."

"The king is not a man, then! And he does not love Mary Mancini?"

"He adores her."

"Well, he will marry her then. We shall have war with Spain. M. Mazarin
will spend a few of the millions he has put away; our gentlemen
will perform prodigies of valor in their encounters with the proud
Castilians, and many of them will return crowned with laurels, to be
recrowned by us with myrtles. Now, that is my view of politics."

"Montalais, you are wild!" said Louise, "and every exaggeration attracts
you as light does a moth."

"Louise, you are so extremely reasonable, that you will never know how
to love."

"Oh!" said Louise, in a tone of tender reproach, "don't you see,
Montalais? The queen-mother desires to marry her son to the Infanta;
would you wish him to disobey his mother? Is it for a royal heart like
his to set such a bad example? When parents forbid love, love must