Chapter 64

Chapter LXIV:
Madame's Four Chances.

Anne of Austria had begged the young queen to pay her a visit. For some
time past suffering most acutely, and losing both her youth and beauty
with that rapidity which signalizes the decline of women for whom life
has been one long contest, Anne of Austria had, in addition to her
physical sufferings, to experience the bitterness of being no longer held
in any esteem, except as a surviving remembrance of the past, amidst the
youthful beauties, wits, and influential forces of her court. Her
physician's opinions, her mirror also, grieved her far less than the
inexorable warnings which the society of the courtiers afforded, who,
like rats in a ship, abandon the hold into which on the very next voyage
the water will infallibly penetrate, owing to the ravages of decay. Anne
of Austria did not feel satisfied with the time her eldest son devoted to
her. The king, a good son, more from affectation than from affection,
had at first been in the habit of passing an hour in the morning and one
in the evening with his mother; but, since he had himself undertaken the
conduct of state affairs, the duration of the morning and evening's visit
had been reduced by one half; and then, by degrees, the morning visit had
been suppressed altogether. They met at mass; the evening visit was
replaced by a meeting, either at the king's assembly or at Madame's,
which the queen attended obligingly enough, out of regard to her two sons.

The result of this was, that Madame gradually acquired an immense
influence over the court, which made her apartments the true royal place
of meeting. This, Anne of Austria perceived; knowing herself to be very
ill, and condemned by her sufferings to frequent retirement, she was
distressed at the idea that the greater part of her future days and
evenings would pass away solitary, useless, and in despondency. She
recalled with terror the isolation in which Cardinal Richelieu had
formerly left her, those dreaded and insupportable evenings, during
which, however, she had both youth and beauty, which are ever accompanied
by hope, to console her. She next formed the project of transporting the
court to her own apartments, and of attracting Madame, with her brilliant
escort, to her gloomy and already sorrowful abode, where the widow of a
king of France, and the mother of a king of France, was reduced to
console, in her artificial widowhood, the weeping wife of a king of
France.

Anne began to reflect. She had intrigued a good deal in her life. In
the good times past, when her youthful mind nursed projects that were,
ultimately, invariably successful, she had by her side, to stimulate her
ambition and her love, a friend of her own sex, more eager, more