Chapter 44

Chapter XLIV:
Two Friends.

The queen looked steadily at Madame de Chevreuse, and said: "I believe
you just now made use of the word 'happy' in speaking of me. Hitherto,
duchesse, I had thought it impossible that a human creature could
anywhere be found more miserable than the queen of France."

"Your afflictions, madame, have indeed been terrible enough. But by the
side of those great and grand misfortunes to which we, two old friends,
separated by men's malice, were just now alluding, you possess sources of
pleasure, slight enough in themselves it may be, but greatly envied by
the world."

"What are they?" said Anne of Austria, bitterly. "What can induce you to
pronounce the word 'pleasure,' duchesse - you who, just now, admitted
that my body and my mind both stood in need of remedies?"

Madame de Chevreuse collected herself for a moment, and then murmured,
"How far removed kings are from other people!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that they are so far removed from the vulgar herd that they
forget that others often stand in need of the bare necessities of life.
They are like the inhabitant of the African mountains, who, gazing from
the verdant tableland, refreshed by the rills of melted snow, cannot
comprehend that the dwellers in the plains below are perishing from
hunger and thirst in the midst of the desert, burnt up by the heat of the
sun."

The queen colored, for she now began to perceive the drift of her
friend's remark. "It was very wrong," she said, "to have neglected you."

"Oh! madame, I know the king has inherited the hatred his father bore
me. The king would exile me if he knew I were in the Palais Royal."

"I cannot say that the king is very well disposed towards you, duchesse,"
replied the queen; "but I could - secretly, you know - "

The duchesse's disdainful smile produced a feeling of uneasiness in the
queen's mind. "Duchesse," she hastened to add, "you did perfectly right
to come here, even were it only to give us the happiness of contradicting
the report of your death."

"Has it been rumored, then, that I was dead?"

"Everywhere."

"And yet my children did not go into mourning."

"Ah! you know, duchesse, the court is very frequently moving about from
place to place; we see M. Albert de Luynes but seldom, and many things
escape our minds in the midst of the preoccupations that constantly beset
us."

"Your majesty ought not to have believed the report of my death."

"Why not? Alas! we are all mortal; and you may perceive how rapidly I,
your younger sister, as we used formerly to say, am approaching the tomb."

"If your majesty believed me dead, you ought, in that case, to have been
astonished