Chapter 44 - Page 2

not to have received the news."

"Death not unfrequently takes us by surprise, duchesse."

"Oh! your majesty, those who are burdened with secrets such as we have
just now discussed must, as a necessity of their nature, satisfy their
craving desire to divulge them, and they feel they must gratify that
desire before they die. Among the various preparations for their final
journey, the task of placing their papers in order is not omitted."

The queen started.

"Your majesty will be sure to learn, in a particular manner, the day of
my death."

"In what way?"

"Because your majesty will receive the next day, under several coverings,
everything connected with our mysterious correspondence of former times."

"Did you not burn them?" cried Anne, in alarm.

"Traitors only," replied the duchesse, "destroy a royal correspondence."

"Traitors, do you say?"

"Yes, certainly, or rather they pretend to destroy, instead of which they
keep or sell it. Faithful friends, on the contrary, most carefully
secrete such treasures, for it may happen that some day or other they
would wish to seek out their queen in order to say to her: 'Madame, I am
getting old; my health is fast failing me; in the presence of the danger
of death, for there is the risk for your majesty that this secret may be
revealed, take, therefore, this paper, so fraught with menace for
yourself, and trust not to another to burn it for you.'"

"What paper do you refer to?"

"As far as I am concerned, I have but one, it is true, but that is indeed
most dangerous in its nature."

"Oh! duchesse, tell me what it is."

"A letter, dated Tuesday, the 2d of August, 1644, in which you beg me to
go to Noisy-le-Sec, to see that unhappy child. In your own handwriting,
madame, there are those words, 'that unhappy child!'"

A profound silence ensued; the queen's mind was busy in the past; Madame
de Chevreuse was watching the progress of her scheme. "Yes, unhappy,
most unhappy!" murmured Anne of Austria; "how sad the existence he led,
poor child, to finish it in so cruel a manner."

"Is he dead?" cried the duchesse suddenly, with a curiosity whose genuine
accents the queen instinctively detected.

"He died of consumption, died forgotten, died withered and blighted like
the flowers a lover has given to his mistress, which she leaves to die
secreted in a drawer where she had hid them from the gaze of others."

"Died!" repeated the duchesse with an air of discouragement, which would
have afforded the queen the most unfeigned delight, had it not been
tempered in some measure with a mixture of doubt - "Died - at Noisy-le-
Sec?"

"Yes, in the arms of his tutor, a poor, honest man, who did