place of meeting. This, Anne of
Austria had perceived; feeling herself to be suffering, 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 her
youth and beauty, which are always 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
anticipated widowhood, the always 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 which were
invariably successful, she then had by her side to stimulate her
ambition and her love, a friend of her own sex, more eager, more
ambitious, than herself--a friend who had loved her, a rare circumstance
at court, and whom some petty considerations had removed from her
forever. But for many years past--except Madame de Motteville, and
except La Molena, her Spanish nurse, a confidante in her character of
countrywoman and woman too--who could boast of having given good advice
to the queen? Who, too, among all the youthful heads there, could recall
the past for her--that past in which alone she lived? Anne of Austria
remembered Madame de Chevreuse, in the first place exiled rather by her
wish than the king's, and then dying in exile, the wife of a gentleman
of obscure birth and position. She asked herself what Madame de
Chevreuse would formerly have advised her in a similar circumstance, in
their mutual difficulties arising from their intrigues; and, after
serious reflection, it seemed as if the clever, subtle mind of her
friend, full of experience and sound judgment, answered her in her
ironical tone of voice: "All these insignificant young people are poor
and greedy of gain. They require gold and incomes to keep alive their
means of amusement; it is by interest you must gain them over." And Anne
of Austria adopted this plan. Her purse was well filled, and she had at
her disposal a considerable sum of money, which had been amassed by