rose.

What golden tribute had his homage brought to her ambition! What
ecstasy had it poured into her heart! How truly had she loved that
princely boy, who, careless, happy, and fickle, was bestowing upon
other women the roses which for her had withered years ago, leaving
upon their blighted stems the sharp and cruel thorns of his
inconstancy!

Since then, twenty-three years had gone by; she had become a wife
and the mother of seven children, but the wound still festered; the
old sorrow still sang its mournful dirge within a heart which to-day
beat as wildly as ever, and felt a pang as keen as when it first
grew jealous, and learned that not she, but Marie, had become the
divinity whom Louis worshipped.

Marie, too, had been forsaken, and had stifled the cries of her
despairing heart by marriage with another. The fate of both sisters
had been the same--a short dream of gratified ambition, followed by
long years of humiliation. It seemed that the prosperity and
happiness of Cardinal Mazarin's nieces had been coexistent with his
life, for when the eyes of their uncle closed in death, the light of
their fortunes grew dim and expired.

The portrait of Louis XIV., which was calling up the spectres of so
many buried joys, had been painted expressly for Olympia Mancini. It
represented his first declaration of love to her, and had been sent
as a souvenir of "the brightest hour of his life." He had barely
reached his thirty-seventh year, and yet this winsome youth had been
transformed into a demure devotee, who, despising the vanities of