Seeing that the long relation had tired her, I leant forward and filled one of the little liqueur glasses with the golden Chartreuse and handed it to her. She took it from me with a smile, and insisted that we should take some too. We sat sipping the delicious liqueur in silence, our gaze fixed on the blue lake and the white sails slowly moving in the stillness of the afternoon heat.
As I saw the colour returning to the Queen's face, I ventured to ask her another question.
"There is one person, madame," I said, "who's history you have not yet thought fit to tell us. Forgive me if I am presumptuous in asking the question. It is your son I speak of."
A very sweet smile came over her face as I ceased speaking. She glanced, it appeared involuntarily, at the sparkling liqueur in her little glass.
"My dear son's history is soon told," she said, still smiling. "He has been a Carthusian monk, a Trappist, since his youth. He never had the least inclination for the life of the world. He is the abbot of the monastery of San Juan del Monte, near Valoro."
Then I recollected his fair face, and blue eyes, and remembered that he had reminded me of some one; now I knew who that some one was—his mother. It was plain to me why Don Juan had taken us there.
"Every year," continued Queen Inez, "by the special permission of the head of his order, he comes to me and stays ten days. Those are, to me, ten days stolen from heaven. Thank God, he comes next month, and each time he comes," she added, with a smile, raising her little glass, "he brings me a present from his monastery of the veritable Chartreuse."
We lingered with the dear old Queen until the sun was declining over the lake, whose waters were turning a darker blue; the sister came with wraps and a warning glance to take her to her rooms in the convent.
At her request, during our short stay at Lucerne, we visited her again and again, until the day of parting came, and we bade her farewell on the terrace where we had first met her, above the blue waters of the lake.
There were tears in her eyes and ours when we left her, and the tears came back again to ours as we looked wistfully up at the terrace as Fritz rowed us away, and we saw her waving to us no longer.