“Speak on, madame, speak on, Queen,” said Buckingham; “the sweetness of your voice covers the harshness of your words.  You talk of sacrilege!  Why, the sacrilege is the separation of two hearts formed by God for each other.”

“My Lord,” cried the queen, “you forget that I have never said that I love you.”

“But you have never told me that you did not love me; and truly, to speak such words to me would be, on the part of your Majesty, too great an ingratitude.  For tell me, where can you find a love like mine—­a love which neither time, nor absence, nor despair can extinguish, a love which contents itself with a lost ribbon, a stray look, or a chance word?  It is now three years, madame, since I saw you for the first time, and during those three years I have loved you thus.  Shall I tell you each ornament of your toilet?  Mark!  I see you now.  You were seated upon cushions in the Spanish fashion; you wore a robe of green satin embroidered with gold and silver, hanging sleeves knotted upon your beautiful arms—­those lovely arms—­with large diamonds.  You wore a close ruff, a small cap upon your head of the same color as your robe, and in that cap a heron’s feather.  Hold!  Hold!  I shut my eyes, and I can see you as you then were; I open them again, and I see what you are now—­a hundred time more beautiful!”

“What folly,” murmured Anne of Austria, who had not the courage to find fault with the duke for having so well preserved her portrait in his heart, “what folly to feed a useless passion with such remembrances!”

“And upon what then must I live?  I have nothing but memory.  It is my happiness, my treasure, my hope.  Every time I see you is a fresh diamond which I enclose in the casket of my heart.  This is the fourth which you have let fall and I have picked up; for in three years, madame, I have only seen you four times—­the first, which I have described to you; the second, at the mansion of Madame de Chevreuse; the third, in the gardens of Amiens.”

“Duke,” said the queen, blushing, “never speak of that evening.”

“Oh, let us speak of it; on the contrary, let us speak of it!  That is the most happy and brilliant evening of my life!  You remember what a beautiful night it was?  How soft and perfumed was the air; how lovely the blue heavens and star-enameled sky!  Ah, then, madame, I was able for one instant to be alone with you.  Then you were about to tell me all—­the isolation of your life, the griefs of your heart.  You leaned upon my arm—­upon this, madame!  I felt, in bending my head toward you, your beautiful hair touch my cheek; and every time that it touched me I trembled from head to foot.  Oh, Queen!  Queen!  You do not know what felicity from heaven, what joys from paradise, are comprised in a moment like that.  Take my wealth, my fortune, my glory, all the days I have to live, for such an instant, for a night like that.  For that night, madame, that night you loved me, I will swear it.”