Page:Ten Years Later.djvu/501

Rh TEN YEARS LATER. 489 "But," added Anne of Austria, "do you not know, as well as I do, that if the king were to win the bracelets he would not restore them to me?" "You mean he would give them to the queen?" "No; and for the very same reason, that he would not give them back again to me; since, if I had wished to make the queen a present of them, I had no need of him for that purpose." Madame cast a side-glance upon the bracelets, which, in their casket, were dazzlingly exposed to view upon a table close beside her. "How beautiful they are!" she said, sighing. "But stay," madame continued, "we are quite forgetting that your majesty's dream is nothing but a dream." "I should be very much surprised," returned Anne of Austria, "if my dream were to deceive me; that has hap- pened to me very seldom." "AVe may look upon you as a prophetess, then?" "I have already said that I dream but very rarely; but the coincidence of my dream about this matter, with my own ideas, is extraordinary, it agrees so wonderfully with my own views and arrangements." "What arrangements do you allude to?" "That you will win the bracelets, for instance." "In that case, it will not be the king." "Oh!" said Anne of Austria, "there is not such a very great distance between his majesty's heart and your own; for, are you not his sister, for whom he has a great regard? There is not, I repeat, so very wide a distance that my dream can be pronounced false on that account. Come, let us reckon up the chances in its favor." "I will count them." "In the first place, we will begin with the dream. If the king wins he is sure to give you the bracelets." "I admit that is one." "If you win them, they are yours." "Naturally; that may be admitted also." "Lastly; if Monsieur were to win them." "Oh!" said madame, laughing heartily, "he would give them to the Chevalier de Lorraine." Anne of Austria laughed as heartily as her daughter-in- law; so much so, indeed, that her sufferings again returned, and made her turn suddenly pale in the very midst of her enjoyment. "What is the matter?" inquired madame, almost terrified.