She stood by the window, and half turned her head, as the prince, with profoundest salutations, came forward. She received his obsequious homage with a slight inclination of the head.
"Can your eminence tell me the meaning of this din?" asked she, curtly.
"I regret not to be able to do so, your majesty. I hear no din; I have heard nothing save the friendly greetings of your people, whose piety edifies my heart as a priest, and whose welcome is dear to me as a quasi subject of your majesty. For the mother of my future queen must allow me the right to consider myself almost as her subject."
"I would prefer that you considered yourself wholly the subject of my daughter; as I doubt whether she will ever find much loyalty in your heart, prince. But before we go further, pray inform me what means all this parade attendant upon the visit of the French ambassador here to-day? I am not aware that we are in the carnival; nor have I an unmarried daughter for whom any French prince can have sent you to propose. "
"Surely your majesty would not compare the follies of the carnival with the solemnity of an imperial betrothal," said the archbishop, deferentially.
"Be so good as not to evade my question. I ask why you came to the palace with a procession just fit to take its place in a carnival?"
"Because the day on which the mother of the dauphiness receives me, is a great festival for me. I have so long sued for an audience, that when it is granted me, I may well be allowed to celebrate it with the pomp which befits the honor conferred."
"And in such a style that all Vienna may know it, and the rumor of your audience reach the ears of the dauphiness herself."
"I cannot hope that the dauphiness takes interest enough in the French ambassador to care whether he be received at a foreign court or not," replied the cardinal, still in his most respectful tone. "I request you to come to the point," said Maria Theresa, impatiently. "Tell me, at once, why you have asked for an audience? What seeks the French ambassador of the empress of Austria?"
"Allow me to say that had I appeared to-day before your majesty as the French ambassador, I would have been accompanied by my attaches and received by your majesty in state. But your majesty is so gracious as to receive me in private. It follows, therefore, that the Cardinal de Rohan, the cousin of the dauphin, visits the imperial mother of the young dauphiness."