shall be protected; but as further delay might prove fatal to
our hopes, I would venture to implore your Majesty to lose no time in
preparing the despatch of which I am to be the bearer."

"It shall be done," replied Marie, forcing a painful smile. "It will in
all probability be my last appeal; for should you fail, Rubens, I shall
feel that all is indeed lost!"

The artist bowed profoundly, and left the room in order to give the
necessary orders for his immediate departure; while his royal guest
seized a pen, and with a trembling hand, and in almost illegible
characters, wrote the following affecting letter:--

"Sire--During many years I have been deprived of your dear presence, and
have implored your clemency without any reply. God and the Holy Virgin
are my witnesses that my greatest suffering throughout that period has
proceeded less from exile, poverty, and humiliation, than from the
estrangement of a son, and the loss of his dear presence. Meanwhile I am
becoming aged, and feel that each succeeding hour is bringing me more
rapidly to the grave. Thus, Sire, would it not be a cruel and an
unnatural thing that a mother should expire without having once more
seen her beloved son, without having heard one word of consolation from
his lips, without having obtained his pardon for the involuntary wrongs
of which she may have been guilty towards him? I do not ask of you,
Sire, to return to France as a powerful Queen; should such be your good
pleasure, I will not even appear again at Court, and will finish my life
in any obscure town which you may see fit to select as my residence;
but, in the name of God and all the Saints, I adjure you not to allow me
to die out of the kingdom of France; or to suffer me any longer to drag
my sorrows and my misery from one foreign city to another; for you are
not aware, Sire, that the widow of Henri IV, and the mother of the
reigning monarch of France and Navarre, Louis XIII, will soon be without
a roof to shelter her head, and a little bread for her support! You are
not aware, Sire, that if the hour of my death were now to strike, no one
would be beside me to close my eyes, and to say, 'This is the body of
Marie de Medicis.' Take then compassion on my very humble request, Sire;
and receive, whatever may be your decision, the blessings of
your mother.

"In the city of Antwerp, the ninth day of October of the year of our
salvation MDCXLI.--I, the Queen-mother, MARIE."

As the painter-pr