LOUISE DE LA VALLIERE. 147
- 0h, my mother, what power may not a deep affection
exercise over him!" "And yet you say you are abandoned?"
- 'Quite true, quite true; I e^eak absurdly. There is a
feeling of anguish, however, which I can never control.** "And that is?" "The king may make a happy choice — may find a home, with all the tender influences of home, not far from that we can offer him — a home with children round him, the children of another woman than myself. Oh, madamel I should die if I were but to see the king's children.'* "Marie, Marie," replied the queen-mother, with a smile, and she took the young queen's hand in her own, "remem- ber what I am going to say, and let it always be a consola- tion to you: the king cannot have a dauphin without you." "With this remark the queen-mother quitted her daughter- in-law, in order to meet madame, whose arrival in the grand cabinet had just been announced by one of the pages. Ma- dame had scarcely taken time to change her dress. Her face revealed her agitation, which betrayed a plan the ex- ecution of which occupied, while the result disturbed, her mind. "I came to ascertain," she said, "if your majesties are suffering any fatigue from our journey." "None at all," said the queen-mother. "But a slight one," replied Maria Theresa. "I have suffered from annoyance more than from any- thing else," said madame. "What annoyance?" inquired Anne of Austria. "The fatigue the king undergoes in riding about on horseback." "That does the king good." "And it was I who advised him to do it," said Maria Theresa, turning pale. Madame said not a word in reply; but one of those smiles which were peculiarly her own flitted for a moment across her lips, without passing over the rest of her face; then, immediately changing the conversation, she continued, "We shall find Paris precisely the Paris we left it; the same in- trigues, plots, and flirtations going on." "Intrigues! What intrigues do you allude to?" inquired the queen-mother. "People are talking a good deal about Monsieur Fouquet and Madame Plessis-Belliere." "Who makes up the number to about ten thousand," re-
