rt,
and here the king again found himself under the same roof with
Mademoiselle de la Valliere.

In the mean time the health of the queen-mother rapidly declined. She
was fast sinking into the arms of death. The young queen, Maria
Theresa, having recovered, was unwilling to leave her suffering
mother-in-law even for an hour.

"The sufferings of Anne of Austria," writes Miss Pardoe, "must indeed
have been extreme, when, superadded to the physical agony of which she
was so long the victim, her peculiar fastidiousness of scent and touch
are remembered. Throughout the whole of her illness she had adopted
every measure to conceal, even from herself, the effects of her
infirmity. She constantly held in her hand a large fan of Spanish
leather, and saturated her linen with the most powerful perfumes. Her
sense of contact was so acute and irritable that it was with the
utmost difficulty that cambric could be found sufficiently fine for
her use. Upon one occasion, when Cardinal Mazarin was jesting with
her upon this defect, he told her 'that if she were damned, her
eternal punishment would be sleeping in linen sheets.'"

Louis XIV. was too much engrossed with his private pleasures, his
buildings, and rapidly multiplying diplomatic intrigues to pay much
attention to his dying mother. It was not pleasant to him to
contemplate the scenes of suffering in a sick-chamber. The gloom which
was gathering around Anne of Austria was somewhat deepened by the
intelligence she received of the death of her brother, Philip IV. of
Spain. It was another admonition to her that she too must die. Though
Philip IV. was a reserved and stately man, allowing himself in but few
expressions of tenderness toward his family, Maria Theresa, in her
isolation, wept bitterly over her father's death.

The ties of relationship are feeble in courts. Louis XIV. was growing
increasingly ambitious of enlarging his domains and aggrandizing his
power. The news of the death of the King of Spain was but a source of
exultation to him. Though scrupulous in the discharge of the
ceremonies of the Church, he was a stranger to any high sense of
integrity or honor. In the treaty upon his marriage with Maria
Theresa he had agreed to resign every claim to any portion of the
Spanish kingdom. The death of Philip IV. left Spain in the hands of a
feeble woman. Louis XIV., upon the plea that the five hundred thousand
crowns promised as the dower of his wife had not yet been paid,