rain might pass.

"And thus again she saw Louis, who preceded the cavalcade on
horseback, surrounded by the nobles of his court. The heart of Mary
throbbed almost to bursting. It was impossible that the king should
not recognize the livery of her uncle--the carriage in which he had so
often been seated by her side; he would not, he _could_ not pass her
by without one word. She deceived herself. His majesty was laughing at
some merry tale, by which he was so much engrossed that he rode on
without even bestowing a look upon the gilded coach and its
heart-broken occupant."[H]

[Footnote H: Louis XIV. and the Court of France, vol. ii., p. 48.]

Mary returned to Paris pondering deeply her awful destiny. She saw
that she was fated to meet continually the king and queen in their
festivities; that with a broken heart she must feign gayety and
smiles; that by lingering torture she must sink into the grave. There
was no refuge for her but to escape from Paris and from the court.
Apparently the only way to accomplish this was to accept the proffered
hand of the Prince Colonna, who would remove her from Paris to Rome.

[Illustration: PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU.]

The next morning, pale and tearless, Mary drove to Vincennes, where
Cardinal Mazarin then was, and informed him that she was ready to
marry Prince Colonna, provided the marriage could take place
immediately, and that the cardinal would, without an hour's delay,
write to the king to obtain his consent. The cardinal was rejoiced,
and proceeded with energy. The king, without one kind word, gave his
cold and indifferent consent. In accordance with the claims of
etiquette, he sent her some valuable gifts, which she did not dare to
decline.

"Mary walked to the altar," says Miss Pardoe, to whom we are indebted
for many of these details, "as she would have walked to the scaffold,
carrying with her an annual dower of one hundred thousand livres, and
perjuring herself by vows which she could not fulfill. Her after
career we dare not trace. Suffice it that the ardent and enthusiastic
spirit which would, had she been fated to happiness, have made her
memory a triumph for her sex, embittered by falsehood, wrong, and
treachery, involved her in errors over which both charity and
propriety oblige us to draw a veil; and if all Europe rang with the
enormity of her excesses, much of their origin may safely be traced to
those who, after wringing her heart, trampled it in the dust beneath