TWO FRIENDS.
The queen looked steadily at Madame de Chevreuse, and said, "I believe you just now made use of the word 'happy' in speaking of me. Hitherto, duchesse, I had thought it impossible that a human creature could anywhere be found less happy than the queen of France."
"Your afflictions, madame, have indeed been terrible enough. But by the side of those great and grand misfortunes to which we, two old friends separated by men's malice, were just now alluding, you possess sources of pleasure, slight enough in themselves it may be, but which are greatly envied by the world."
"What are they?" said Anne of Austria, bitterly. "What can induce you to pronounce the word 'pleasure,' duchesse—you who, just now, admitted that my body and my mind both stood in need of remedies?"
Madame de Chevreuse collected herself for a moment and then murmured, "How far removed kings are from other people!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that they are so far removed from the vulgar herd that they forget that others ever stand in need of the bare necessaries of life. They are like the inhabitant of the African mountain, who gazing from the verdant table land, refreshed by the rills of melted snow, cannot comprehend that the dwellers in the plains below him are perishing from hunger and thirst in the midst of their lands, burned up by the heat of the sun."
The queen slightly colored, for she now began to perceive the drift of her friend's remark. "It was very wrong," she said, "to have neglected you."
"Oh! madame, the king I know has inherited the hatred his father bore me. The king would dismiss me if he knew I were in the Palais Royal."
"I cannot say that the king is very well disposed toward you, duchesse," replied the queen; "but I could—secretly, you know—"