l-powerful, it is true, but I am not immortal."

"Come, then, the most pressing matter is to find Toby again, I suppose.
Is not that your opinion?"

"Oh! as for that, you will not find him again," said Aramis, "and if he
were of any great value to you, you must give him up for lost."

"At all events he is somewhere or another in the world," said Fouquet.

"You're right, let me act," replied Aramis.

Chapter LXIV. Madame's Four Chances.

Anne of Austria had begged the young queen to pay her a visit. For some
time past suffering most acutely, and losing both her youth and beauty
with that rapidity which signalizes the decline of women for whom life
has been one long contest, Anne of Austria had, in addition to her
physical sufferings, to experience the bitterness of being no longer
held in any esteem, except as a surviving remembrance of the past,
amidst the youthful beauties, wits, and influential forces of her court.
Her physician's opinions, her mirror also, grieved her far less than the
inexorable warnings which the society of the courtiers afforded, who,
like rats in a ship, abandon the hold into which on the very next voyage
the water will infallibly penetrate, owing to the ravages of decay. Anne
of Austria did not feel satisfied with the time her eldest son devoted
to her. The king, a good son, more from affectation than from affection,
had at first been in the habit of passing an hour in the morning and one
in the evening with his mother; but, since he had himself undertaken
the conduct of state affairs, the duration of the morning and evening's
visit had been reduced by one half; and then, by degrees, the morning
visit had been suppressed altogether. They met at mass; the evening
visit was replaced by a meeting, either at the king's assembly or at
Madame's, which the queen attended obligingly enough, out of regard to
her two sons.

The result of this was, that Madame gradually acquired an immense
influence over the court, which made her apartments the true royal place
of meeting. This, Anne of Austria perceived; knowing herself to be very
ill, and condemned by her sufferings to frequent retirement, she was
distressed at the idea that the greater part of her future days and
evenings would pass away solitary, useless, and in despondency. She
recalled with terror the isolation in which Cardinal Richelieu had
formerly left her, those dreaded and insupportable evenings, during
which, however, she had both y