.

"It was eight o'clock," pursued the Beguine; "the king was seated at
supper, full of joy and happiness; around him on all sides arose wild
cries of delight and drinking of healths; the people cheered beneath the
balconies; the Swiss guards, the musketeers, and the royal guards
wandered through the city, borne about in triumph by the drunken
students. Those boisterous sounds of the general joy disturbed the
dauphin, the future king of France, who was quietly lying in the arms of
Madame de Hausac, his nurse, and whose eyes, as he opened them and
stared about, might have observed two crowns at the foot of his cradle.
Suddenly your majesty uttered a piercing cry, and Dame Peronne
immediately flew to your bedside. The doctors were dining in a room at
some distance from your chamber; the palace, deserted from the frequency
of the irruptions made into it, was without either sentinels or guards.
The midwife, having questioned and examined your majesty, gave a sudden
exclamation, as if in wild astonishment, and taking you in her arms,
bewildered almost out of her senses from sheer distress of mind,
dispatched Laporte to inform the king that her majesty the queen-mother
wished to see him in her room. Laporte, you are aware, madame, was a man
of the most admirable calmness and presence of mind. He did not approach
the king as if he were the bearer of alarming intelligence and wished to
inspire the terror which he himself experienced; besides, it was not a
very terrifying intelligence which awaited the king. Therefore, Laporte
appeared with a smile upon his lips, and approached the king's chair,
saying to him, 'Sire, the queen is very happy, and would be still more
so to see your majesty.' On that day, Louis XIII. would have given his
crown away to the veriest beggar for a 'God bless you.' Animated,
light-hearted, and full of gayety, the king rose from the table, and
said to those around him, in a tone that Henry IV. might have adopted,
'Gentlemen, I am going to see my wife.' He came to your bedside, madame,
at the very moment Dame Peronne presented to him a second prince, as
beautiful and healthy as the former, and said, 'Sire, Heaven will not
allow the kingdom of France to fall into the female line.' The king,
yielding to a first impulse, clasped the child in his arms, and cried,
'Oh! Heaven, I thank Thee!'"

At this part of her recital, the Beguine paused, observing how intensely
the queen was suffering; she had thrown herse