"I can assure your Majesty," replied Madame de Beaumont, with a deep tone of feeling which had no hypocrisy in it, for her whole heart was bound by habit, principle, and inclination, to her royal mistress--"I can assure your Majesty, that many a tear have I shed over the sorrows of my Queen; and when his Eminence drove me from the court, I regretted not the splendour of a palace, I regretted not the honour of serving my sovereign, I regretted not the friends I left behind, or the hopes I lost, but I regretted that I could not be the sharer of my mistress's misfortunes.--But your Majesty has now received a blessing from Heaven," she continued, willing to turn the conversation from the troubled course of memory to the more agreeable channels of hope--"a blessing which we scarcely dreamed of, a consolation under all present sorrows, and a bright prospect for the years to come. "Oh, yes, my little Louis, you would say," replied the Queen, her face lightening with all a mother's joy as she spoke of her son. "He is indeed a cherub; and sure am I, that if God sends him years, he will redress his mother's wrongs by proving the greatest of his race." She spoke of the famous Louis the Fourteenth, and some might have thought she prophesied. But it was only the fervour of a mother's hope, an ebullition of that pure feeling, which alone, of all the affections of the heart, the most sordid poverty cannot destroy, and the proudest rank can hardly check. "He is indeed a cherub," continued the Queen; "and such was your Pauline to you, De Beaumont, when the Cardinal drove you from my side: a consolation not only in your exile, but also in your mourning for your noble lord. Come near, young lady; let me see if thou art like thy father." Pauline approached; and the Queen laying her hand gently upon her arm, ran her eye rapidly over her face and figure, every now and then pausing for a moment, and seeming to call memory to her aid, in the comparison she was making between the dead and the living. But suddenly she started back, "_Sainte Vierge!_" cried she, crossing herself, "your dress is all dabbled with blood. What bad omen is this?" "May it please your Majesty," said the Marchioness, half smiling at the Queen's superstition, for her own strong mind rejected many of the errors of the day, "that blood is only an omen of Pauline's charitable disposition; for in the forest hard by, we came up with a wounded cavalier, and, like a true _demoiselle errante_, Pauline rendered him personal aid, even at the expense of her robe." "Nay, nay, De Beaumont," said the Queen, "it matters not how it came; it is a bad omen: some misfortune is about to happen. I remember the day before my father died, the Conde de Saldaña came to court with a spot of blood upon the lace of his cardinal; and on that fatal day which----"