had bitten him.
"Your highness shall know your fate, since your blindness drives you to it."
These words were uttered in a voice so steady but so threatening that the hearers felt icy chills in their veins. The lady turned pale visibly.
"Do not listen to him, my daughter," whispered the old governess in German to her ward.
"Let her hear, for since she wanted to know, know she shall!" said Balsamo in the same language, which doubled the mystery over the incident. "But to you alone, lady."
"Be it so," said the latter. "Stand back!"
"I suppose this is just an artifice to get a private audience?" sneered she, turning again to the magician.
"Do not try to irritate me," said he; "I am but the instrument of a higher Power, used to enlighten you. Insult fate and it will revenge itself, well knowing how. I merely interpret its moves. Do not fling at me the wrath which will recoil on yourself, for you can not visit on me the woes of which I am the sinister herald."
"Then there are woes?" said the princess, softened by his respectfulness and disarmed by his apparent resignation.
"Very great ones."
"Tell me all. First, will my family live happy?"
"Your misfortunes will not reach those you leave at home. They are personal to you and your new family. This royal family has three members, the Duke of Berry, the Count of Provence, and the Count of Artois. They will all three reign."
"Am I to have no son?"
"Sons will be among your offspring, but you will deplore that one should live and the other die."
"Will not my husband love me?"
"Too well. But his love and your family's support will fail you."
"Those of the people will yet be mine."
"Popular love and support—the ocean in a calm. Have you seen it in a storm?"
"I will prevent it rising, or ride upon the billows."
"The higher its crest, the deeper the abyss."
"Heaven remains to me."
"Heaven does not save the heads it dooms."
"My head in danger? Shall I not reign a queen?"
"Yes—but would to God you never did."
The princess smiled disdainfully.
"Hearken, and remember," proceeded Balsamo. "Did you remark the subject on the tapestry of the first room you entered on French ground? The Massacre of the Innocents; the ominous figures must have remained in your mind. During that storm, did you see that the lightning felled a tree on your left, almost to crush your coach? Such presages are not to be interpreted but as fatal ones."
Letting her head fall upon her bosom, the princess reflected for a space before asking:
"How will those three die?"
"Your husband the king will die headless; Count Provence, legless; and Artois heartless."
"But myself? I command you to speak, or I shall hold all this as a paltry trick. Take care, my lord, for the daughter of Maria Theresa is not to be sported with—a woman who holds in hand the destinies of thirty millions of souls. You know no more, or your imagination is exhausted."
Balsamo placed the saucer and the decanter on a bench in the darkest nook of the arbor, which thus resembled a pythoness' cave; he led her within the gloom.
"Down on your knees," he said, alarming her by the action; "for you will seem to be imploring God to spare you the terrible outcome which you are to view."
Mechanically the princess obeyed, but as Balsamo touched the crystal with his magic wand, some frightful picture no doubt appeared in it, for the princess tried to rise, reeled, and screamed as she fell in a swoon.
They ran to her.
"That decanter?" she cried, when revived.
The water was limpid and stainless.
The wonder-worker had disappeared!
Chapter XII.
Taverney's Prospects Brighten.
The first to perceive the archduchess's fainting fit, was Baron Taverney who was on the lookout from being most uneasy about the interview. Hearing the scream and seeing Balsamo dart out of the bower he ran up.
The first word of the dauphiness was to call for the bewitched decanter: her second to bid no harm to be done the sorcerer. It was time to say it, for Philip Taverney had rushed after the latter.
She attributed the swoon to fever from the journey. She talked of sleeping for some hours, in Andrea's room, but the Governor of Strasburg arrived in hot haste with a dispatch from Versailles, and she had to receive Lord Stainville, who was brother in-law of the prime minister.
Opening this missive, the princess read:
"The court presentation of Lady Dubarry is fixed on, if she can find a patroness, which we hope will not be. But the surest method of blocking the project is to have your royal highness here, in whose presence none will dare suggest such an offense."
"Very good. My horses must be put to. We depart at once."
Cardinal Rohan looked at Lord Stainville as if for an explanation of this abrupt change.
"The dauphin is in a hurry to see his wife," whispered the latter with such cunning that the churchman thought it had slipped his tongue and was satisfied with it.
Andrea had been trained by her father to understand royal freaks; she was not surprised at the contradiction. So the lady saw only smoothness on her face as she turned to her, saying:
"Thank you; your welcome has deeply touched me. Baron, you are aware that I made the vow to benefit the first French gentleman and his family, whom I should meet on the frontier. But I am not going to stop at this point, and Mademoiselle Andrea is not to be forgotten. Yes, I wish her to be my maid of honor. The brother will defend the king in the army, the sister will serve me; the father will instruct the first in loyalty, the other in virtue. I shall have enviable servitors, do you not agree?" she continued to Philip, who was kneeling. "I will leave one of my carriages to bring you in my train. Governor, name somebody to accompany my carriage for the Taverneys, and notify that it is of my household."
"Beausire," called out the governor, "come forward."
A sharp-eyed cavalier, some twenty-four years old, rode out from the escort and saluted.
"Set a guard over Baron Taverney's coach, and escort it."
"We shall meet soon again, then," said
