therewith, who pretended to be surprised,
saying, "Indeed, I have heard the Coadjutor talk of your Majesty whole
days with delight; but if the conversation happened to touch upon the
Cardinal, he was no longer the same man, and even raved against your
Majesty, but immediately relented towards you, though never towards the
Cardinal."

Madame de Chevreuse, who was the Queen's confidante in her youth, gave me
such a history of her early days as I cannot omit giving you, though I
should have done it sooner. She told me that the Queen was neither in
body nor mind truly Spanish; that she had neither the temperament nor the
vivacity of her nation, but only the coquetry of it, which she retained
in perfection; that M. Bellegarde, a gallant old gentleman, after the
fashion of the Court of Henri III., pleased her till he was going to the
army, when he begged for one favour before his departure, which was only
to put her hand to the hilt of his sword, a compliment so insipid that
her Majesty was out of conceit with him ever after. She approved the
gallant manner of M. de Montmorency much more than she loved his person.
The aversion she had to the pedantic behaviour of Cardinal de Richelieu,
who in his amours was as ridiculous as he was in other things excellent,
made her irreconcilable to his addresses. She had observed from the
beginning of the Regency a great inclination in the Queen for Mazarin,
but that she had not been able to discover how far that inclination went,
because she (Madame de Chevreuse) had been banished from the Court very
soon after; and that upon her return to France, after the siege of Paris,
the Queen was so reserved at first with her that it was impossible for
her to dive into her secrets. That since she regained her Majesty's
favour she had sometimes observed the same airs in her with regard to
Cardinal Mazarin as she used to display formerly in favour of the Duke of
Buckingham; but at other times she thought that there was no more between
them than a league of friendship. The chief ground for her conjecture
was the impolite and almost rude way in which the Cardinal conversed with
her Majesty. "But, however," said Madame de Chevreuse, "when I reflect
on the Queen's humour, all this may admit of another interpretation.
Buckingham used to tell me that he had been in love with three Queens,
and was obliged to curb all the three; therefore I cannot tell what to
think of the matter."

To resume the hist