ister
of Anne of Austria, much has been written; much that is good, and
more--far more--that is ill, for those who have a queen for friend shall
never lack for enemies. But those who have praised and those who have
censured have at least been at one touching her marvellous beauty. At
the time whereof I write it is not possible that she could be less than
forty-six, and yet her figure was slender and shapely and still endowed
with the grace of girlhood; her face delicate of tint, and little marked
by time--or even by the sufferings to which, in the late king's reign,
Cardinal de Richelieu had subjected her; her eyes were blue and peaceful
as a summer sky; her hair was the colour of ripe corn. He would be a
hardy guesser who set her age at so much as thirty.

My appearance she greeted by letting fall her book, and lifting up her
hands--the loveliest in France--she uttered a little cry of surprise.

"Is it really you, Gaston?" she asked.

Albeit it was growing wearisome to be thus greeted by all to whom I
showed myself, yet I studied courtesy in my reply, and then, 'neath
the suasion of her kindliness, I related all that had befallen me
since first I had journeyed to Blois, in Andrea de Mancini's company,
withholding, however, all allusions to my feelings towards Yvonne. Why
betray them when they were doomed to be stifled in the breast that begat
them? But Madame de Chevreuse had not been born a woman and lived six
and forty years to no purpose.

"And this maid with as many suitors as Penelope, is she very beautiful?"
she inquired slyly.

"France does not hold her equal," I answered, falling like a simpleton
into the trap she had set me.

"This to me?" quoth she archly. "Fi donc, Gaston! Your evil ways have
taught you as little gallantry as dissimulation." And her merry ripple
of laughter showed me how in six words I had betrayed that which I had
been at such pains to hide.

But before I could, by protestations, plunge deeper than I stood
already, the Duchesse turned the conversation adroitly to the matter of
that letter of hers, wherein she had bidden me wait upon her.

A cousin of mine--one Marion de Luynes, who, like myself, had, through
the evil of his ways, become an outcast from his family--was lately
dead. Unlike me, however, he was no adventurous soldier of fortune, but
a man of peace, with an estate in Provence that had a rent-roll of five
thousand livres a year. On his death-bed he had cast about him for