me, duchesse. Alas!
you kill your friend in thus trifling with her terrible distress."

And the queen, leaning her head upon the shoulder of the old duchesse,
burst into a flood of bitter tears. "How young you are--still!" said the
latter, in a hollow voice; "you can weep!"

Chapter XLIV. Two Friends.

The queen looked steadily at Madame de Chevreuse, and said: "I believe
you just now made use of the word 'happy' in speaking of me. Hitherto,
duchesse, I had thought it impossible that a human creature could
anywhere be found more miserable than the queen of France."

"Your afflictions, madame, have indeed been terrible enough. But by the
side of those great and grand misfortunes to which we, two old friends,
separated by men's malice, were just now alluding, you possess sources
of pleasure, slight enough in themselves it may be, but greatly envied
by the world."

"What are they?" said Anne of Austria, bitterly. "What can induce you
to pronounce the word 'pleasure,' duchesse--you who, just now, admitted
that my body and my mind both stood in need of remedies?"

Madame de Chevreuse collected herself for a moment, and then murmured,
"How far removed kings are from other people!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that they are so far removed from the vulgar herd that they
forget that others often stand in need of the bare necessities of life.
They are like the inhabitant of the African mountains, who, gazing from
the verdant tableland, refreshed by the rills of melted snow, cannot
comprehend that the dwellers in the plains below are perishing from
hunger and thirst in the midst of the desert, burnt up by the heat of
the sun."

The queen colored, for she now began to perceive the drift of her
friend's remark. "It was very wrong," she said, "to have neglected you."

"Oh! madame, I know the king has inherited the hatred his father bore
me. The king would exile me if he knew I were in the Palais Royal."

"I cannot say that the king is very well disposed towards you,
duchesse," replied the queen; "but I could--secretly, you know--"

The duchesse's disdainful smile produced a feeling of uneasiness in the
queen's mind. "Duchesse," she hastened to add, "you did perfectly
right to come here, even were it only to give us the happiness of
contradicting the report of your death."

"Has it been rumored, then, that I was dead?"

"Everywhere."

"And yet my children did not go into mourning."

"Ah! you know, duchesse, th