wn.

Marie followed them with her eyes. "Still they are happy," she whispered
to the Queen, remembering the censure which in her hearing had been
thrown upon the match.

But without answering, Anne of Austria, fearful that in the crowd some
inconsiderate expression might inform her young friend of the mournful
event so interesting to her, placed herself with Marie behind the King.
Monsieur, the Prince-Palatine, and the Duc de Bouillon came to speak to
her with a gay and lively air. The second, however, casting upon Marie a
severe and scrutinizing glance, said to her:

"Madame la Princesse, you are most surprisingly beautiful and gay this
evening."

She was confused at these words, and at seeing the speaker walk away with
a sombre air. She addressed herself to the Duc d'Orleans, who did not
answer, and seemed not to hear her. Marie looked at the Queen, and
thought she remarked paleness and disquiet on her features. Meantime, no
one ventured to approach the minister, who was deliberately meditating
his moves. Mazarin alone, leaning over his chair, followed all the
strokes with a servile attention, giving gestures of admiration every
time that the Cardinal played. Application to the game seemed to have
dissipated for a moment the cloud that usually shaded the minister's
brow. He had just advanced a tower, which placed Louis's king in that
false position which is called "stalemate,"--a situation in which the
ebony king, without being personally attacked, can neither advance nor
retire in any direction. The Cardinal, raising his eyes, looked at his
adversary and smiled with one corner of his mouth, not being able to
avoid a secret analogy. Then, observing the dim eyes and dying
countenance of the Prince, he whispered to Mazarin:

"Faith, I think he'll go before me. He is greatly changed."

At the same time he himself was seized with a long and violent cough,
accompanied internally with the sharp, deep pain he so often felt in the
side. At the sinister warning he put a handkerchief to his mouth, which
he withdrew covered with blood. To hide it, he threw it under the table,
and looked around him with a stern smile, as if to forbid observation.
Louis XIII, perfectly insensible, did not make the least movement, beyond
arranging his men for another game with a skeleton and trembling hand.
There two dying men seemed to be throwing lots which should depart first.

At this moment a clock struck the hour of midnight. The King