Shall I speak to him? You know how much he loves me, my mother.

“Alas! my nephew is not yet king, and you know Laporte has told us twenty times that he himself is in need of almost everything.”

“Then let us pray to Heaven,” said the girl.

The two women who thus knelt in united prayer were the daughter and grand-daughter of Henry IV., the wife and daughter of Charles I.

They had just finished their double prayer, when a nun softly tapped at the door of the cell.

“Enter, my sister,” said the queen.

“I trust your majesty will pardon this intrusion on her meditations, but a foreign lord has arrived from England and waits in the parlor, demanding the honor of presenting a letter to your majesty.”