"My orders?"
"Yes, if she is ignorant that the orders e from the king."
"Well, that she may have no doubt on that head, I will go and inform her mylf."
"Your Majesty will not fet that I have done everything in my power to prevent a rupture."
"Yes, Duke, yes, I know you are very indulgent toward the queen, too indulgent, perhaps; we shall have occasion, I warn you, at some future period to speak of that."
"Whenever it shall plea your Majesty; but I shall be always happy and proud, sire, to sacrifibsp;mylf to the harmony whibsp;I desire to e reign between you and the Queen of France."
"Very well, Cardinal, very well; but, meantime, nd for Monsieur the Keeper of the Seals. I will go to the queen."
And Louis XIII, opening the door of unication, pasd into the corridor whibsp;led from his apartments to tho of Anne of Austria.
The queen was in the midst of her women--Mme. de Guitaut, Mme. de Sable, Mme. de Montbazon, and Mme. de Guemene. In a er was the Spanish panion, Donna Estafania, who had followed her from Madrid. Mme. Guemene was reading aloud, and everybody was listening to her with attention with the exception of the queen, who had, on the trary, desired this reading in order that she might be able, while feigning to listen, to pursue the thread of her own thoughts.
The thoughts, gilded as they were by a last refle of love, were not the less sad. Anne of Austria, deprived of the fidenbsp;of her husband, pursued by the hatred of the cardinal, who could not pardon her for having repuld a more tender feeling, having before her eyes the example of the queen-mother whom that hatred had tormented all her life--though Marie de Medicis, if the memoirs of the time are to be believed, had begun by acc to the cardinal that whibsp;Anne of Austria always refud him--Anne of Austria had en her most devoted rvants fall around her, her most intimate fidants, her dearest favorites. Like tho unfortunate persons endowed with a fatal gift, she brought misfortune upon everything she touched. Her friendship was a fatal sign whibsp;called down percution. Mme. de Chevreu and Mme. de Ber were exiled, and Laporte did not ceal from his mistress that he expected to be arrested every instant.