-those lovely arms--with large diamonds. You wore a close
ruff, a small cap upon your head of the same color as your robe, and in
that cap a heron's feather. Hold! Hold! I shut my eyes, and I can see
you as you then were; I open them again, and I see what you are now--a
hundred time more beautiful!"

"What folly," murmured Anne of Austria, who had not the courage to find
fault with the duke for having so well preserved her portrait in his
heart, "what folly to feed a useless passion with such remembrances!"

"And upon what then must I live? I have nothing but memory. It is my
happiness, my treasure, my hope. Every time I see you is a fresh diamond
which I enclose in the casket of my heart. This is the fourth which you
have let fall and I have picked up; for in three years, madame, I have
only seen you four times--the first, which I have described to you; the
second, at the mansion of Madame de Chevreuse; the third, in the gardens
of Amiens."

"Duke," said the queen, blushing, "never speak of that evening."

"Oh, let us speak of it; on the contrary, let us speak of it! That is
the most happy and brilliant evening of my life! You remember what a
beautiful night it was? How soft and perfumed was the air; how lovely
the blue heavens and star-enameled sky! Ah, then, madame, I was able
for one instant to be alone with you. Then you were about to tell me
all--the isolation of your life, the griefs of your heart. You leaned
upon my arm--upon this, madame! I felt, in bending my head toward you,
your beautiful hair touch my cheek; and every time that it touched me
I trembled from head to foot. Oh, Queen! Queen! You do not know what
felicity from heaven, what joys from paradise, are comprised in a moment
like that. Take my wealth, my fortune, my glory, all the days I have
to live, for such an instant, for a night like that. For that night,
madame, that night you loved me, I will swear it."

"My Lord, yes; it is possible that the influence of the place, the charm
of the beautiful evening, the fascination of your look--the thousand
circumstances, in short, which sometimes unite to destroy a woman--were
grouped around me on that fatal evening; but, my Lord, you saw the queen
come to the aid of the woman who faltered. At the first word you dared
to utter, at the first freedom to which I had to reply, I called for
help."

"Yes, yes, that is true. And any other love but mine would have sunk
beneath this ordeal; but my love came ou