do so!"

"It is very seldom, indeed, that women love the man in loving the king.
But if such a thing happened, which I doubt, you would do better to
wish, Marie, that such women should really love your husband. In the
first place, the devoted love of a mistress is a rapid element of the
dissolution of a lover's affection; and then, by dint of loving, the
mistress loses all influence over her lover, whose power of wealth she
does not covet, caring only for his affection. Wish, therefore, that the
king should love but lightly, and that his mistress should love with all
her heart."

"Oh, my mother, what power may not a deep affection exercise over him!"

"And yet you say you are resigned?"

"Quite true, quite true; I speak absurdly. There is a feeling of
anguish, however, which I can never control."

"And that is?"

"The king may make a happy choice--may find a home, with all the tender
influences of home, not far from that we can offer him,--a home with
children round him, the children of another woman. Oh, madame! I should
die if I were but to see the king's children."

"Marie, Marie," replied the queen-mother with a smile, and she took the
young queen's hand in her own, "remember what I am going to say, and
let it always be a consolation to you: the king cannot have a Dauphin
without _you_."

With this remark the queen-mother quitted her daughter-in-law, in
order to meet Madame, whose arrival in the grand cabinet had just been
announced by one of the pages. Madame had scarcely taken time to change
her dress. Her face revealed her agitation, which betrayed a plan, the
execution of which occupied, while the result disturbed, her mind.

"I came to ascertain," she said, "if your majesties are suffering any
fatigue from our journey."

"None at all," said the queen-mother.

"A little," replied Maria Theresa.

"I have suffered from annoyance more than anything else," said Madame.

"How was that?" inquired Anne of Austria.

"The fatigue the king undergoes in riding about on horseback."

"That does the king good."

"And it was I who advised him," said Maria Theresa, turning pale.

Madame said not a word in reply; but one of those smiles which were
peculiarly her own flitted for a moment across her lips, without passing
over the rest of her face; then, immediately changing the conversation,
she continued, "We shall find Paris precisely the Paris we quitted; the
same intrigues, plots, and flirtations going on