146 LOUISE DE LA VALLIERE. king passed her, slie said, "What a beautiful horse, sire! Is it not Monsieur's bay horse?'* The young queen merely remarked: "Are you better now, Bire?" CHAPTER XXIIL TRIUMFEMINATE. On" the king's arrival in Paris, he sat at the council which had been summoned, and worked for a certain portion of the day. The queen remained with the queen-mother, and burst into tears as soon as she had taken leave of the king. "Ah, madame!" she said, "the king no longer loves me! What will become of me?" "A husband always loves his wife when she is like you,'* replied Anne of Austria. "A time may come when he will love another woman in- stead of me." "What do you .all loving?" "Always thinking of a person — always seeking her society." "Do you happen to have remarked," said Anne of Austria, "that the king has ever done anything of the sort?" "No, madame," said the young queen hesitatingly. "What is there to complain of, th n, Marie?" "You will admit that the king leaves me?" "The king, my daughter, belongs to his people." "And that is tjie very reason why he no longer belongs to me; and that is the reason, too, why I shall find myself, as so many queens have been before me, forsaken and for- gotten, while glory and honors will be reserved for others. Oh, my mother! the king is so handsome! how often will others tell him that they love him, and how much, indeed, they must do so!" "It is very seldom that women love the man in loving the king. But should that happen, which I doubt, you should rather wish, Marie, that such women should really love your husband. In the first place, the devoted love of a mistress is a rapid element of the dissolution of a lover's affection; and then, by dint of loving, the mistress loses all influence over her lover, whose power or wealth she does not covet, caring only for his affection. Wish, therefore, that the king should love but lightly and that his mistress should love with all her heart."
