rother, Don Mario Chigi, and to
send an embassador to Paris with the most humble apology.

These events were but slight episodes in the gay life of the
pleasure-loving king. He was still reveling in an incessant round of
feasting and dancing, flitting with his gay court from one to another
of his metropolitan and rural palaces.

There are few so stern as not to feel emotions of sympathy rather than
of condemnation for Louise de la Valliere. She was a child of
seventeen, exposed to all the fascinations and temptations of the most
luxurious court then upon the globe. But God has implanted in every
bosom a sense of right and wrong. She wept bitterly over her fall. Her
remorse was so great that she withdrew as far as possible from
society, and the anguish of her repentance greatly embarrassed her
royal lover.

Henrietta was greatly annoyed at the preference which the king had
shown for Louise over herself. She determined to drive the unfortunate
favorite from the court. Anne of Austria, with increasing years, was
growing oblivious of her own youthful indiscretions, and was daily
becoming more stern in her judgments. A cancer had commenced its
secret ravages upon her person. Its progress no medical skill could
arrest. She tried to conceal the terrible secret which was threatening
her with the most loathsome and distressing of deaths. In this mood of
mind the haughty queen sent for the weeping Louise to her room.
Trembling in every nerve, the affrighted child attended the summons.
She found Anne of Austria with Henrietta by her side. The queen,
without assigning any cause, sternly informed her that she was
banished from the court of France, and that suitable attendants would
immediately convey her to a distant castle. Upon Louise attempting to
make some inquiry why she was thus punished, the haughty queen sternly
interrupted her with the reply "that France could not have two
queens."

Louise staggered back to her room overwhelmed with despair. Both God
and man will declare that, whatever fault there might have been in the
relations then existing between the king and this unprotected girl,
the censure should have rested a thousand fold more heavily upon the
king than upon his victim. And yet Louise was to be driven in ignominy
from the court, to enter into a desolated world utterly ruined.
Through the remainder of the day no one entered her apartment. She
spent the hours in tears and in the fever of despair. In the evenin