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Rh 484 TEN TEARS LATER. day, I should not have the slightest shadow of uneasiness on your account." Fouquet shrugged his shoulders. "Am I not my own master," he said, "and is the king, then, king of my brain and of my flesh?" "You are right," replied Aramis, "do not let us give more importance to matters than is necessary; and besides — Well! if we are menaced, we have means of defense." "Oh! menaced!" said Fouquet, "you do not place this gnat bite, as it were, among the number of menaces which may compromise my fortune and my life, do you?" "Do not forget, Monsieur Fouquet, that the bite of an insect can kill a giant, if the insect be venomous." "But has this sovereign power you were speaking of already vanished?" "I am all-powerful, it is true, but I am not immortal." "Come, then, the most pressing mattter is to find Toby again, I suppose. Is not that your opinion?" "Oh! as for that, you will not find him again," said Aramis, "and if he were of any great value to you, you must give him up for lost." "At all events, he is somewhere or another in the world," said Fouquet. "You're right, let me act," replied Aramis. CHAPTER LXIV. madame's four chances. Anne of Austria had begged the young queen to pay her a visit. For some time past suffering most acutely, and losing both her youth and beauty with that rapidity which signalizes the decline of women for whom life has been a long contest, Anne of Austria had, in addition to her physi- cal sufferings, to experience the bitterness of being no longer held in any esteem, except as a living remembrance of the past, amid the youthful beauties, wits, and influences of her court. Her physician's opinions, her mirror also, grieved her far less than the inexorable warnings which the society of the courtiers afforded, who, like the rats in a ship, abandoned the hold in which the water is on the point of penetrating, owing to the ravages of decay. Anne of Austria did not feel satisfied with the time her eldest son devoted to her. The king, a good son, more from affecta- tion than from affection, had at first been in the habit of