I will take my leave. Adieu, madame,
adieu."

These words were uttered with a harmony of tone and respect of manner
that deprived the queen of all her anger and suspicion, but did not
remove her feeling of curiosity. "You are right," she said; "it ill
becomes those who are suffering to reject the means of relief which
Heaven sends them. Speak, then; and may you, indeed, be able, as you
assert you can, to administer relief to my body--"

"Let us first speak a little of the mind, if you please," said the
Beguine; "of the mind, which, I am sure, must also suffer."

"My mind?"

"There are cancers so insidious in their nature that their very
pulsation is invisible. Such cancers, madame, leave the ivory whiteness
of the skin untouched, and marble not the firm, fair flesh, with their
blue tints; the physician who bends over the patient's chest hears not,
though he listens, the insatiable teeth of the disease grinding its
onward progress through the muscles, as the blood flows freely on; the
knife has never been able to destroy, and rarely even, temporarily, to
disarm the rage of these mortal scourges; their home is in the mind,
which they corrupt; they fill the whole heart until it breaks. Such,
madame, are the cancers fatal to queens; are you, too, free from their
scourge?"

Anne slowly raised her arm, dazzling in its perfect whiteness, and pure
in its rounded outlines, as it was in the time of her earlier days.

"The evils to which you allude," she said, "are the condition of the
lives of the high in rank upon earth, to whom Heaven has imparted mind.
When those evils become too heavy to be borne, Heaven lightens their
burden by penitence and confession. There we lay down our burden, and
the secrets which oppress us. But, forget not, that the same gracious
Heaven, in its mercy, apportions to their trials the strength of the
feeble creatures of its hand; and my strength has enabled me to bear my
burden. For the secrets of others, the silence of Heaven is more than
sufficient; for my own secrets, that of my confessor is just enough."

"You are as courageous, madame, I see, as ever, against your enemies.
You do not acknowledge your confidence in your friends."

"Queens have no friends; if you have nothing further to say to me--if
you feel yourself inspired by Heaven as a prophetess--leave me, I pray,
for I dread the future."

"I should have supposed," said the Beguine, resolutely, "that you would
rather have dreaded t