Page:Ten Years Later 2.djvu/499

TEN" TEARS LATER. 487 the aphorism, that the bracelets would have been priceless in value if they had not been unfortunate enough to be placed in contact with arms as beautiful as the queen's. This compliment had been honored by a translation into all the languages of Europe, and numerous were the verses in Latin and French which had been circulated on the subject. The day that Anne of Austria had selected for the lottery was a decisive moment; the king had not been near his mother for a couple of days; madame, after the great scene of the Dryads and Naiads, was sulking by herself. The king's fit of sulkiness was over, but his mind was absorb- ingly occupied by a circumstance which raised him above the stormy disputes and the giddy pleasures of the court. Anne of Austria effected a diversion by the announcement of the famous lottery to take place in her apartments on the following evening. With this object in view she saw the young queen, whom, as we have already seen, she had invited to pay her a visit in the morning. "I have good news to tell you," she said to her; "the king has been say- ing the most tender things about you. He is young, you know, and easily drawn away; but so long as you keep near me, he will not venture to keep away from you, to whom, besides, he is most warmly and affectionately attached. I intend to have a lottery this evening, and shall expect to see you." "I have heard," said the young queen, with a sort of timid reproach, "that your majesty intends to put in lot- tery those beautiful bracelets whose rarity is so great that we ought not to allow them to pass out of the custody of the crown, even were there no other reason than that they had once belonged to you." "My daughter," said Anne of Austria, who read the young queen's thoughts, and wished to console her for not having received the bracelets as a present, "it is positively necessary that I should induce madame to pass her time always in my apartments." "Madame!" said the young queen, blushing. "Of course; would you not prefer to have a rival near you, whom you could watch and rule over, than to know that the king is with her, always as ready to flirt with as to be flirted with by her? The lottery I have proposed is my means of attraction for that purpose; do you blame me?" "Oh, no!" returned Maria Theresa, clapping her hands with a childlike expression of delight. "And you no longer regret, then, that I did not give you these bracelets, as I had at first inteuded to do?"