"Oh, no!" returned Maria-Theresa, clapping her hands with a childlike expression of delight. "And you no longer regret, then, that I did not give you these bracelets, as I had at first intended to do?" "Oh, no, no!" "Very well; make yourself look as beautiful as possible, that our supper may be very brilliant; the gayer you seem, the more charming you appear, and you will eclipse all the ladies present as much by your brilliancy as by your rank." Maria-Theresa left full of delight. An hour afterward, Anne of Austria received a visit from Madame, whom she covered with caresses, saying, "Excellent news! the king is charmed with my lottery." "But I," replied Madame, "am not quite so charmed; to see such beautiful bracelets on any one's arms but yours or mine, is what I cannot reconcile myself to do." "Well, well," said Anne of Austria, concealing by a smile a violent pang which she had just experienced, "do not alarm yourself, young lady, and do not look at things in the worst light immediately." "Ah, madame, fortune is blind, and I am told there are two hundred tickets." "Quite as many as that; but you cannot surely forget that there can only be one winner." "No doubt. But who will that be? can you tell?" said Madame, in despair. "You remind me that I had a dream last night; my dreams are always good--I sleep so little." "What was your dream?--But are you suffering?" "No," said the queen, stifling with wonderful command the torture of a renewed attack of shooting pains in her bosom; "I dreamed that the king won the bracelets." "The king?" "You are going to ask me, I think, what the king could possibly do with the bracelets?" "Yes." "And you would not add, perhaps, that it would be very fortunate if the king were really to win, for he would be obliged to give the bracelets to some one else." "To restore them to you, for instance." "In which case I should immediately give them away; for you do not think, I suppose," said the queen, laughing, "that I have put these bracelets up to a lottery from necessity. My object was to give them without arousing any one's jealousy; but if fortune will not get me out of my difficulty--well, I will teach fortune a lesson--and I know very well to whom I intend to offer the bracelets." These words were accompanied by so expressive a smile, that Madame could not resist paying her by a grateful kiss. "But," added Anne of Austria, "do you not know as well as I do, that if the king were to win the bracelets he would not restore them to me?" "You mean he would give them to the queen?" "No; and for the very same reason that he would not give them back again to me; since, if I had wished to make the queen a present of them, I had no need of him for that purpose." Madame cast a side-glance upon the bracelets, which, in their casket, were dazzlingly exposed to view upon a table close beside her.