rie?"

"You will admit that the king leaves me?"

"The king, my daughter, belongs to his people."

"And that is the very reason why he no longer belongs to me; and that is
the reason, too, why I shall find myself, as so many queens have been
before me, forsaken and forgotten, while glory and honors will be
reserved for others. Oh, my mother! the king is so handsome! how often
will others tell him that they love him, and how much, indeed, they must
do so!"

"It is very seldom that women love the man in loving the king. But
should that happen, which I doubt, you should rather wish, Marie, that
such women should really love your husband. In the first place, the
devoted love of a mistress is a rapid element of the dissolution of a
lover's affection; and then, by dint of loving, the mistress loses all
influence over her lover, whose power or wealth she does not covet,
caring only for his affection. Wish, therefore, that the king should
love but lightly, and that his mistress should love with all her heart."

"Oh, my mother, what power may not a deep affection exercise over him!"

"And yet you say you are abandoned?"

"Quite true, quite true; I speak absurdly. There is a feeling of
anguish, however, which I can never control."

"And that is?"

"The king may make a happy choice--may find a home, with all the tender
influences of home, not far from that we can offer him--a home with
children around him, the children of another woman than myself. Oh,
madame! I should die if I were but to see the king's children."

"Marie, Marie," replied the queen-mother with a smile, and she took the
young queen's hand in her own, "remember what I am going to say, and let
it always be a consolation to you: the king cannot have a Dauphin
without you."

"With this remark the queen-mother quitted her daughter-in-law, in order
to meet Madame, whose arrival in the grand cabinet had just been
announced by one of the pages. Madame had scarcely taken time to change
her dress. Her face revealed her agitation, which betrayed a plan the
execution of which occupied, while the result disturbed, her mind.

"I came to ascertain," she said, "if your majesties are suffering any
fatigue from our journey."

"None at all," said the queen-mother.

"But a slight one," replied Maria-Theresa.

"I have suffered from annoyance more than from anything else," said
Madame.

"What annoyance?" inquired Anne of Austria.

"The fatigue the king undergoes i