Chapter 23

Chapter XXIII:
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 instead of me."

"What do you call 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, then, Marie?"

"You will admit that the king leaves me?"

"The king, my daughter, belongs to his people."

"And that is the very reason why he no longer belongs to me; and that is
the reason, too, why I shall find myself, as so many queens before me,
forsaken and forgotten, whilst 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, indeed, that women love the man in loving the king.
But if such a thing happened, which I doubt, you would do better to 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 of 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."

"Oh, my mother, what power may not a deep affection exercise over him!"

"And yet you say you are resigned?"

"Quite true, quite true; I speak absurdly. There is a feeling of
anguish, however, which I can never control."

"And that is?"

"The king may make a happy choice - may find a home, with all the tender
influences of home, not far from that we can offer him, - a home with
children round him, the children of another woman. Oh, madame! I should
die if I were but to see the king's children."

"Marie, Marie," replied the queen-mother with a smile, and she took the
young queen's hand in her own, "remember what I am going to say, and let
it always be a consolation to you: the king cannot have a Dauphin without
_you_."

With this remark the queen-mother quitted her daughter-in-law, in order
to meet Madame, whose arrival in the