outh 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
ambitious than herself,--a friend who had loved her, a rare circumstance
at courts, and whom some petty considerations had removed from her
forever. But for many years past--except Madame de Motteville, and 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
have advised her to do in similar circumstances, 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 the well-remembered
ironical tones: "All the insignificant young people are poor and greedy
of gain. They require gold and incomes to supply 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 Mazarin for her,
and lodged in a place of safety. She possessed the most magnificent
jewels in France, and especially pearls of a size so large that they
made the king sigh every time he saw them, because the pearls of his
crown were like millet seed compared to them. Anne of Austria had
neither beauty nor charms any longer at her disposal. She gave out,
therefore, that her wealth was great, and as an inducement for others
to visit her apartments she let it be kn