"Your Majesty soon leaves St. Germain's," replied the Queen. "I do not think you love it for a sojourn, as in other days."
"Not so," answered Louis; "so well do I love it, that I had purposed to have worn out the rest of my days here, had not the duties of my station called me hence: but my return will be speedy if God give me life.--What man can say how long he may remain? and I feel many a warning that my time will be but short in this world.--Ha! what mean those drops in your eyes?--I did not know, Anne, that such were your feelings." And he pressed the Queen's hand, which he had continued to retain in his.
"Oh Louis!" replied Anne of Austria, and by that simple exclamation conveyed a more delicate reproach to the heart of her husband than she could have done by any other expression in the range of language. Louis felt it, and drawing her arm kindly through his own, he proposed aloud that the whole party should walk forth upon the terrace. It was the Queen's favourite spot, and she easily understood that it was meant as some atonement for many a former slight. Those, too, who stood round and saw what had taken place, began to perceive that a new star was dawning in the horizon, and turned their eyes to watch its progress and court its influence.
The King and Queen were followed by the greater part of the court; and during the walk Louis continued to manifest that kindness towards his wife, which had it been earlier shown, might have given him a life of happiness. "Let me beg you, Madam," said he, as at length they turned to enter the Palace, "not only to be careful of our children, for that I am sure you will be, but also to be careful of their mother, for my sake."
The Queen's feelings were overpowering; the tears rolled rapidly down her cheeks, taking from her all power of utterance, and quitting the King, after pressing his hand to her lips, she retired to her own apartments, to indulge in solitude the new and delightful emotions which her husband's unexpected kindness had excited.
Which shows that the Moment and the Manner have often more to do with Success than the Matter.
The various preparations for the King's journey into Roussillon occupied no small space of time. Litters and carriages were to be provided; relays of horses to be stationed on the road; cooks and victuallers were to be sent forward; and a thousand other arrangements to be made, required either by the general difficulty of locomotion in those days, or by the failing health of the King. It was not then, as in the present time, when monarchs and subjects travel with equal facility all over the globe: when a king gets into his travelling chaise with no more to do than a private man, and is carried along over a level road without let or hindrance, jolt or jumbling, to whatsoever place his fancy may incline him. The journey of a sovereign was then as formidable an undertaking as the passage of the Great Desert to a modern traveller, and required fully as much provision and circumspection.