g for some jewels at her toilet-table;
she soon returned, slowly and gravely, to the window. Marie was more
calm, and was gazing sorrowfully at the landscape before her, the hills
in the distance, and the storm gradually spreading itself.

The Queen resumed in a more serious tone:

"God has been more merciful to you than your imprudence perhaps
deserved, Marie. He has saved you from great danger. You were willing to
make great sacrifices, but fortunately they have not been accomplished
as you expected. Innocence has saved you from love. You are as one who,
thinking she has swallowed a deadly poison, has in reality drunk only
pure and harmless water."

"Ah, Madame, what mean you? Am I not unhappy enough already?"

"Do not interrupt me," said the Queen; "you will, ere long, see
your present position with different eyes. I will not accuse you of
ingratitude toward the Cardinal; I have too many reasons for not liking
him. I myself witnessed the rise of the conspiracy. Still, you should
remember, 'ma chere', that he was the only person in France who, against
the opinion of the Queen-mother and of the court, insisted upon war with
the duchy of Mantua, which he recovered from the empire and from Spain,
and returned to the Duc de Nevers, your father. Here, in this very
chateau of Saint-Germain, was signed the treaty which deposed the Duke
of Guastalla.--[The 19th of May, 1632.]--You were then very young; they
must, however, have told you of it. Yet here, through love alone (I
am willing to believe, with yourself, that it is so), a young man of
two-and-twenty is ready to get him assassinated."

"O Madame, he is incapable of such a deed. I swear to you that he has
refused to adopt it."

"I have begged you, Marie, to let me speak. I know that he is generous
and loyal. I am willing to believe that, contrary to the custom of
our times, he would not go so far as to kill an old man, as did the
Chevalier de Guise. But can he prevent his assassination, if his troops
make him prisoner? This we can not say, any more than he. God alone
knows the future. It is, at all events, certain that it is for you
he attacks him, and, to overthrow him, is preparing civil war, which
perhaps is bursting forth at the very moment that we speak--a war
without success. Whichever way it turns, it can only effect evil, for
Monsieur is going to abandon the conspiracy."

"How, Madame?"

"Listen to me. I tell you I am certain of it; I need not explain
m