“But you can tell me this. Not his death—not his death! Heaven forbid that it should be near enough for your gift of divination, whatever that may be, to reach it! But tell me of his life. He is strong, he is healthy; and men do, sometimes, live to be a hundred. Ah! if your witchcraft could tell me that, it would make you the richest man, and me the happiest woman in all France.” “But, madame——” “Do not dispute me. I have power—help me to perpetuate it. You have great skill as a physician, if nothing more. The king’s physicians are negligent, they permit him to be worried with questions of state. They allow the courtiers to disturb him with their quarrels; De Chaiseul never gave him rest, and for this he lost his portfolio. I say again, a physician who will devote himself to the health and real good of the king, who will be the friend of his friends, watchful and trustworthy, might become anything his ambition pointed out. Do not shake your head, monsieur—I ask nothing that an honest man may not perform.” “You ask everything, madame, when you desire a student to give up his pursuit of knowledge, and confine his life to any one man, though that man be King of France.” “Then you refuse me—refuse a position that would crown the highest ambition of most men?” “Madame, I have no ambition.” The countess threw herself back in her chair and laughed aloud. “A man with no ambition? This is a novel creature. But you are looking through the window. What is it that you see there?” The countess started up from her chair and ran across the room, forgetting all her previous efforts at dignity in vulgar haste to learn what had drawn this strange man’s attention so completely from her. CHAPTER II. THE LADY IN THE PARK. The object that had arrested Doctor Gosner’s attention was a group of ladies sauntering beneath the trees of the Park. One, who seemed the superior of the rest, walked a little in advance. She was young, very beautiful, and paused now and then to address some of the ladies with a playful turn of the head, and a smile light and careless as that of a school-girl enjoying her holiday. She was dressed in simple white muslin, gathered up like a cloud around her slender person, and a jaunty little straw hat gave piquancy to a dress which any pretty woman in France might have worn without comment. This young person had broken a straight branch from the shrubberies as she passed through them, and was tearing away the green leaves with one ungloved hand. Once she turned her eyes toward the palace, gave a quick look around, as if she had come upon it unawares, and addressing the lady nearest to her, shook her rustic whip in playful reproach.