“Does your majesty feel better now?” inquired Madame de Motteville.
“Much better,” returned the queen, placing her finger on her lips, to impose silence on her favorite.
“It is very strange,” remarked Madame de Motteville, after a pause.
“What is strange?” said the queen.
“Does your majesty remember the day when this pain attacked you for the first time?”
“I remember only that it was a grievously sad day for me, Motteville.”
“But your majesty did not always regard that day as a sad one.”
“Why?”
“Because three and twenty years ago, on that very day, his present majesty, your own glorious son, was born at the very same hour.”
The queen uttered a loud cry, buried her face in her hands, and seemed utterly prostrated for some minutes; but whether from recollections which arose in her mind, or from reflection, or even with sheer pain, was doubtful. La Molina darted a look at Madame de Motteville, so full of bitter reproach, that the poor woman, perfectly ignorant of its meaning, was in her own exculpation on the point of asking an explanation, when, suddenly, Anne of Austria arose and said, “Yes, the 5th of September; my sorrow began on the 5th of September. The greatest joy, one day; the deepest sorrow the next;—the sorrow,” she added, “the bitter expiation of a too excessive joy.”