"I intend to make my daughter-in-law very happy and I am afraid that my son will not make her so."
"Why not, sire?"
"Because he looks at other women a good deal, and very seldom at her."
"If any but your majesty said that, I should disbelieve them, for the archduchess is sweetly pretty."
"She might be rounded out more; that Mademoiselle de Taverney is the same age and she has a finer figure. She is perfectly lovely."
Fire flashed in the favorite's eyes and warned the speaker of his blunder.
"Why, I wager that you were plump as Watteau's
shepherdesses at sixteen," said he quickly, which adulation improved matters a little, but the mischief was done.
"Humph," said she, bridling up under the pleased smile, "is the young lady of the Taverney family so very, very fair?"
"I only noticed that she was not a bag of bones. You know I am short-sighted and the general outline alone strikes me. I saw that the new-comer from Austria was not plump, that is all."