nsort, when his evident anxiety and increased
tenderness once more led her to believe that she might finally wean him
from his excesses and attach him to herself, that she once more
became calm.

On the 11th of November the anticipated event took place, and the Queen
gave birth to her eldest daughter[208] in the same oval chamber in which
the Dauphin first saw the light.[209] The advent of Elisabeth de France
was not, however, hailed with the same delight by Marie as had been
that of her first-born; on the contrary, her disappointment was extreme
on ascertaining the sex of the infant, from the fact of her having
placed the most entire confidence in the assurances of a devotee named
Soeur Ange, who had been recommended to her notice and protection by the
Sovereign-Pontiff, and who had, before she herself became cognizant of
the negotiations for her marriage, foretold that she would one day be
Queen of France. This woman, who still remained in her service, had
repeatedly assured her that she need be under no apprehension of bearing
daughters, as she was predestined by Heaven to become the mother of
three princes only; and after having, with her usual superstition,
placed implicit faith in the flattering prophecy, Marie no sooner
discovered its fallacy than she abandoned herself to the most violent
grief, refusing to listen to the consolations of her attendants, and
bewailing herself that she should have been so cruelly deceived, until
the King, although he in some measure participated in her annoyance,
succeeded in restoring her to composure by bidding her remember that had
she not been of the same sex as the child of which she had just made him
the father, she could not have herself realised the previous prediction
of Soeur Ange; an argument which, coupled with the probability that the
august infant beside her might in its turn ascend a European throne, was
in all likelihood the most efficacious one which could have been adopted
to reconcile her to its present comparative insignificance.

FOOTNOTES:

[158] Cesar de Vendome was the son of Henri IV and _la belle Gabrielle._
He became Governor of Brittany, and superintendent-in-chief of the
national navigation. Henry also bestowed on him as an appanage the duchy
of Vendome. He married the daughter of Philip Emmanuel of Lorraine, Duc
de Mercoeur, by whom he had three children: Isabelle, who became the
wife of Charles Amedee, Duc de Nemours; Louis, who died single; and
Fra