ward the deserted recess in her room, she said,
addressing vacancy--"Is it not thus that you would have acted, my poor
Chevreuse? Yes, yes; I know it is."

And, like a perfume of days gone by, her youth, her imagination, and her
happiness, seemed to return to her with the echo of this invocation.

CHAPTER VII.

THE LOTTERY.

At eight o'clock in the evening, every one had assembled in the
queen-mother's apartments. Anne of Austria, in full dress, beautiful
still, from former loveliness, and from all the resources which coquetry
can command at the hands of clever assistants, concealed, or rather
pretended to conceal, from the crowd of young courtiers who surrounded
her, and who still admired her, thanks to the combination of
circumstances which we have indicated in the preceding chapter, the
ravages, which were already visible, of the acute suffering to which she
finally yielded a few years later. Madame, almost as great a coquette as
Anne of Austria, and the queen, simple and natural as usual, were seated
beside her, each contending for her good graces. The ladies of honor,
united in a body, in order to resist with greater effect, and
consequently with more success, the witty and lively conversations which
the young men held about them, were enabled like a battalion formed in
square, to offer each other the means of attack and defense which were
thus at their command. Montalais, learned in that species of warfare
which consists of a skirmishing character, protected the whole line by
the sort of rolling-fire which she directed against the enemy.
Saint-Aignan, in utter despair at the rigor, which became insulting
almost, from the very fact of her persisting in it, which Mademoiselle
de Tonnay-Charente displayed, tried to turn his back upon her; but,
overcome by the irresistible brilliancy of her large eyes, he, every
moment, returned to consecrate his defeat by new submissions, to which
Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente did not fail to reply by fresh acts of
impertinence. Saint Aignan did not know which way to turn. La Valliere
had about her, not exactly a court, but sprinklings of courtiers.
Saint-Aignan, hoping by this maneuver to attract Athenais's attention
toward him, had approached the young girl, and saluted her with a
respect which induced some to believe that he wished to balance Athenais
by Louise. But these were persons who had neither been witnesses of the
scene during the shower, nor had heard it spo