Part 67 (2/2)
”No,” said the queen, stifling onderful co pains in her boso won the bracelets”
”The king!”
”You are going to askcould possibly do with the bracelets?”
”Yes”
”And you would not add, perhaps, that it would be very fortunate if the king were really to win, for he would be obliged to give the bracelets to some one else”
”To restore them to you, for instance”
”In which case I should iive thehing, ”that I have put these bracelets up to a lottery fro any one's jealousy; but if Fortune will not get me out of my difficulty-well, I will teach Fortune a lesson-and I know very well to whom I intend to offer the bracelets” These words were accompanied by so expressive a srateful kiss
”But,” added Anne of Austria, ”do you not know, as well as I do, that if the king were to win the bracelets, he would not restore theive them to the queen?”
”No; and for the very saain to me; since, if I had wished to make the queen a present of them, I had no need of hilance upon the bracelets, which, in their casket, were dazzlingly exposed to view upon a table close beside her
”How beautiful they are,” she said, sighing ”But stay,” Mada that yourbut a dream”
”I should be very much surprised,” returned Anne of Austria, ”if my dream were to deceive me; that has happened to me very seldom”
”We may look upon you as a prophetess, then”
”I have already said, that I dream but very rarely; but the coincidence of my dream about this rees so wonderfully with eet the bracelets, for instance”
”In that case, it will not be the king”
”Oh!” said Anne of Austria, ”there is not such a very great distance between his majesty's heart and your own; for, are you not his sister, for whoard? There is not, I repeat, so very wide a distance, that my dream can be pronounced false on that account Come, let us reckon up the chances in its favor”
”I will count thein with the dreaive you the bracelets”
”I admit that is one”
”If you win them, they are yours”
”Naturally; that may be admitted also”
”Lastly;-if Monsieur were to win theive thehed as heartily as her daughter-in-law; so ain returned, and made her turn suddenly pale in the very midst of her enjoyment
”What is the ; a pain intoo much We were at the fourth chance, I think”
”I cannot see a fourth”
”I beg your pardon; I a, and if I be the winner, you are sure of me”
”Oh! thank you, thank you!” exclaimed Madame
”I hope that you look upon yourself as one whose chances are good, and that ins to assure the solid outlines of reality”
”Yes, indeed: you give me both hope and confidence,” said Madame, ”and the bracelets, won in this manner, will be a hundred tiood-bye, until this evening” And the two princesses separated Anne of Austria, after her daughter-in-law had left her, said to herself, as she examined the bracelets, ”They are, indeed, precious; since, by their , I shall have won over a heart to my side, at the sa towards the deserted recess in her roo vacancy,-”Is it not thus that you would have acted, my poor Chevreuse? Yes, yes; I know it is”
And, like a perfuination, and her happiness seemed to be wafted towards the echo of this invocation
Chapter LXV The Lottery
By eight o'clock in the evening, every one had assembled in the queen-mother's apartments Anne of Austria, in full dress, beautiful still, from former loveliness, and from all the resources coquetry can command at the hands of clever assistants, concealed, or rather pretended to conceal, from the crowd of courtiers who surrounded her, and who still admired her, thanks to the combination of circu chapter, the ravages, which were already visible, of the acute suffering to which she finally yielded a few years later Madareat a coquette as Anne of Austria, and the queen, simple and natural as usual, were seated beside her, each contending for her good graces The ladies of honor, united in a body, in order to resist with greater effect, and consequently with more success, the witty and lively conversations which the young men held about them, were enabled, like a battalion formed in a square, to offer each other the means of attack and defense which were thus at their command Montalais, learned in that species of warfare which consists of sustained skir fire she directed against the eneor, which beca in it, Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente displayed, tried to turn his back upon her; but, overcome by the irresistible brilliancy of her eyes, he, every moment, returned to consecrate his defeat by new submissions, to which Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente did not fail to reply by fresh acts of inan did not knohich way to turn La Valliere had about her, not exactly a court, but sprinklings of courtiers Saint-Aignan, hoping by this maneuver to attract Athenais's attention towards hiirl, and saluted her with a respect that induced some to believe that he wished to balance Athenais by Louise But these were persons who had neither been witnesses of the scene during the shower, nor had heard it spoken of As the majority was already infored favor hich she was regarded had attracted to her side some of the most astute, as well as the least sensible, mene, ”How do I know?” and the latter, who said with Rabelais, ”Perhaps” The greatest number had followed in the wake of the latter, just as in hunting five or six of the best hounds alone follow the scent of the animal hunted, whilst the remainder of the pack follow only the scent of the hounds The two queens and Madame examined with particular attention the toilettes of their ladies and et they were queens in recollecting that they omen In other words, they pitilessly picked to pieces every person present ore a petticoat The looks of both princesses simultaneously fell upon La Valliere, who, as we have just said, was completely surrounded at that moment Madame knew not what pity was, and said to the queen-mother, as she turned towards her, ”If Fortune were just, she would favor that poor La Valliere”
”That is not possible,” said the queen-
”Why not?”
”There are only two hundred tickets, so that it was not possible to inscribe every one's name on the list”
”And hers is not there, then?”
”No!”