"Allow me to wish you good evening, my dear friend," says she, and departs. The red-nosed Countess is forced to rise and follow her example, how much against her will it is plain to see; the other ladies retire with her. Madame de Noailles and the Duchesse de Chevreuse are now alone. Madame de Chevreuse heaves a profound sigh; a tear rolls down her cheek, out of which the dimples are faded. Her thin lips are white, and she shivers. "Tell me, Duchess, what misfortune has happened?" asks Madame de Noailles, taking her hand. "A misfortune, yes, for I love her—I love her dearly. I have devoted my life to serve her; without me she would not now be Regent of France." Madame de Chevreuse speaks in broken sentences; her looks are wild; her mind seems to wander; her large prominent eyes are fixed on vacancy. "Duchess, for God's sake rouse yourself. What has happened? Is it the Queen?" And Madame de Noailles wrings the hand of her friend to rouse her. "Yes—it is the Queen," replies Madame de Chevreuse slowly, becoming more conscious, and gazing at her. "Her Majesty has dismissed me. I am on my way to Tours—exiled." "Gracious heaven!" exclaims Madame de Noailles; "what ingratitude!" "Duchess, I thank you for your sympathy; but, I beseech you, say not one word against my beloved mistress. When I entered this room it seemed to me that sorrow had made me mad—my brain was on fire. I am better now, and calmer. My royal mistress may live to want me, as she has so often done before. She may recall me. At Court—in exile—absent or present, I am her humble and devoted slave." "She will want no one as long as she has Mazarin," says the Duchess, with a sneer. "So I fear," returns Madame de Chevreuse. "But what has happened since I left the palace?" again eagerly asks Madame de Noailles. "I will tell you. I have never been the same to her Majesty since the old days, when I was banished, after the Val de Grâce, by Richelieu. She received me well after I returned, when she was Regent; but I have loved her too devotedly not to feel the difference. While, on my side, the long years that I had spent flying over Europe to escape the machinations of the Cardinal, had only made me more devoted to her, the Queen—who formerly trusted me with every thought—had grown serious, reserved, and ascetic. I am pious enough myself,"—and a gleam of fun passes into her weary face, and causes her eyes to sparkle,—"I never eat meat in Lent, and always confess at Easter. But her Majesty has become a bigot. She was always reproving me, too, for those little _agaceries_ (vanities she called them) which no one lives without. 'My age,' she said, 'forbade them.' Now I only own to forty, Duchess; that is not an age to go into a convent, and to think of nothing but my soul. Why should I not enjoy myself a little yet?" And her large eyes find their way to a mirror opposite, and dwell on it with evident complacency.