CHAPTER VII.
THE LOTTERY.
At eight o'clock in the evening, every one had assembled in the queen-mother's apartments.

Anne of Austria, in full dress, beautiful still, from former loveliness, and from all the resources which coquetry can command at the hands of clever assistants, concealed, or rather pretended to conceal, from the crowd of young courtiers who surrounded her, and who still admired her, thanks to the combination of circumstances which we have indicated in the preceding chapter, the ravages, which were already visible, of the acute suffering to which she finally yielded a few years later.

Madame, almost as great a coquette as Anne of Austria, and the queen, simple and natural as usual, were seated beside her, each contending for her good graces.

The ladies of honor, united in a body, in order to resist with greater effect, and consequently with more success, the witty and lively conversations which the young men held about them, were enabled like a battalion formed in square, to offer each other the means of attack and defense which were thus at their command.

Montalais, learned in that species of warfare which consists of a skirmishing character, protected the whole line by the sort of rolling-fire which she directed against the enemy.
Saint-Aignan, in utter despair at the rigor, which became insulting almost, from the very fact of her persisting in it, which Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente displayed, tried to turn his back upon her; but, overcome by the irresistible brilliancy of her large eyes, he, every moment, returned to consecrate his defeat by new submissions, to which Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente did not fail to reply by fresh acts of impertinence.