ral persons entered silently. Philippe
did not stir while his valets-de-chambre dressed him. He had watched,
the evening before, all the habits of his brother, and played the king
in such a manner as to awaken no suspicion. He was then completely
dressed in his hunting costume when he received his visitors. His own
memory and the notes of Aramis announced everybody to him, first of all
Anne of Austria, to whom Monsieur gave his hand, and then Madame with M.
de Saint-Aignan. He smiled at seeing these countenances, but trembled on
recognizing his mother. That figure, so noble, so imposing, ravaged by
pain, pleaded in his heart the cause of that famous queen who had
immolated a child to reasons of state. He found his mother still
handsome. He knew that Louis XIV. loved her, and he promised himself to
love her likewise, and not to prove a cruel chastisement for her old
age. He contemplated his brother with a tenderness easily to be
understood. The latter had usurped nothing over him, had cast no shade
over his life. A separate branch, he allowed the stem to rise without
heeding its elevation or the majesty of its life. Philippe promised
himself to be a kind brother to this prince, who required nothing but
gold to minister to his pleasures. He bowed with a friendly air to
Saint-Aignan, who was all reverences and smiles, and tremblingly held
out his hand to Henrietta, his sister-in-law, whose beauty struck him;
but he saw in the eyes of that princess an expression of coldness which
would facilitate, as he thought, their future relations.

"How much more easy," thought he, "it will be to be the brother of that
woman than her gallant, if she evinces toward me a coldness that my
brother could not have for her, and which is imposed upon me as a duty."
The only visit he dreaded at this moment was that of the queen; his
heart--his mind--had just been shaken by so violent a trial, that in
spite of their firm temperament, they would not, perhaps, support
another shock. Happily the queen did not come. Then commenced, on the
part of Anne of Austria, a political dissertation upon the welcome M.
Fouquet had given to the house of France. She mixed up hostilities with
compliments addressed to the king and questions as to his health, with
little maternal flatteries and diplomatic artifices.

"Well, my son," said she, "are you convinced with regard to Monsieur
Fouquet?"

"Saint-Aignan," said Philippe, "have the goodness to go and inquire