Page:Ten Years Later.djvu/500

Rh 488 TEN YEARS LATER. ^'Oh, no, nol" "Very well; make yourself look as beautiful as possible, that our supper may be very brilliant; the gayer you seem, the more charming you appear, and you will eclipse all the ladies present as much by your brilliancy as by your rank." Maria Theresa left full of delight. An hour afterward Anne of Austria received a visit from madame, whom she covered with caresses, saying, "Excellent news! the king is charmed with my lottery." "But I," replied madame, "am not quite so charmed; to see such beautiful bracelets on any one's arms but yours or mine, is what I cannot reconcile myself to." "Well, well," said Anne of Austria, concealing by a smile a violent paug which she had just experienced, "do not alarm yourself, young lady, and do not look at things in the worst light immediately." "Ah, madame, fortune is blind, and I am told there are two hundred tickets." "Quite as many as that; but you cannot surely forget that there can only be one winner." "No doubt. But who will that be? Can you tell?" said madame, in despair. "You remind me that I had a dream last night; my dreams are always good, I sleep so little." "What was your dream? — but are you suffering?" "No," said the queen, stifling with wonderful command the torture of a renewed attack of shooting pains in her bosom. "I dreamed that the king won the bracelets." "The king?" "You are going to ask me, I think, what the king could possiblv 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 should be obliged to give the bracelets to some one else." "To restore them to you, for instance." "In which case I should immediately give them away; for you do not think, I suppose," said the queen, laughing, "that I have put these bracelets up to a lottery from neces- sity. My object was to give them without arousing 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 smile that ma- dame could not resist paying her a grateful kiss.