But without answering, Anne of Austria, fearful that in the crowd some inconsiderate expression might inform her young friend of the mournful event so interesting to her, placed herself with Marie behind the King.  Monsieur, the Prince-Palatine, and the Duc de Bouillon came to speak to her with a gay and lively air.  The second, however, casting upon Marie a severe and scrutinizing glance, said to her: 

“Madame la Princesse, you are most surprisingly beautiful and gay this evening.”

She was confused at these words, and at seeing the speaker walk away with a sombre air.  She addressed herself to the Duc d’Orleans, who did not answer, and seemed not to hear her.  Marie looked at the Queen, and thought she remarked paleness and disquiet on her features.  Meantime, no one ventured to approach the minister, who was deliberately meditating his moves.  Mazarin alone, leaning over his chair, followed all the strokes with a servile attention, giving gestures of admiration every time that the Cardinal played.  Application to the game seemed to have dissipated for a moment the cloud that usually shaded the minister’s brow.  He had just advanced a tower, which placed Louis’s king in that false position which is called “stalemate,”—­a situation in which the ebony king, without being personally attacked, can neither advance nor retire in any direction.  The Cardinal, raising his eyes, looked at his adversary and smiled with one corner of his mouth, not being able to avoid a secret analogy.  Then, observing the dim eyes and dying countenance of the Prince, he whispered to Mazarin: 

“Faith, I think he’ll go before me.  He is greatly changed.”

At the same time he himself was seized with a long and violent cough, accompanied internally with the sharp, deep pain he so often felt in the side.  At the sinister warning he put a handkerchief to his mouth, which he withdrew covered with blood.  To hide it, he threw it under the table, and looked around him with a stern smile, as if to forbid observation.  Louis XIII, perfectly insensible, did not make the least movement, beyond arranging his men for another game with a skeleton and trembling hand.  There two dying men seemed to be throwing lots which should depart first.

At this moment a clock struck the hour of midnight.  The King raised his head.

“Ah, ah!” he said; “this morning at twelve Monsieur le Grand had a disagreeable time of it.”

A piercing shriek was uttered behind him.  He shuddered, and threw himself forward, upsetting the table.  Marie de Mantua lay senseless in the arms of the Queen, who, weeping bitterly, said in the King’s ear: 

“Ah, Sire, your axe has a double edge.”

She then bestowed all her cares and maternal kisses upon the young Princess, who, surrounded by all the ladies of the court, only came to herself to burst into a torrent of tears.  As soon as she opened her eyes, “Alas! yes, my child,” said Anne of Austria.  “My poor girl, you are Queen of Poland.”