The Chevalier shook his head.
“No, madame. You will accompany the Queen to the Louvre.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Duchesse de Chevreuse did accompany the Queen to the Louvre; but, on arriving there, she found a lettre de cachet banishing her from France within twenty-four hours. A similar order was also served on the Chevalier de Jars.
The Queen was free, but her friends were exiled.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
LOUISE DE LAFAYETTE.
LOUISE DE LAFAYETTE—the only child of Comte Jean de Lafayette, of Hauteville, and of Margaret de Boulon-Busset, his wife—was the young lady selected to fill the vacant post of maid of honour to the Queen, vice De Hautefort, banished.
So long a time had elapsed since the departure of the latter that it seemed as though Anne of Austria never intended to replace her; however, the new mistress of the robes, the Duchesse de Sennécy, a distant relative of Mademoiselle de Lafayette, urged the Queen so strongly in her favour, that the appointment was at last announced.
Louise de Lafayette had passed many years of her girlhood in a convent, and was somewhat dévote, but she was sincere in her piety, and good-natured to excess. Not only was she good-natured, but she was so entirely devoid of malice that it actually pained her to be made acquainted with the faults of others. Perhaps her chief characteristic was an exaggerated sensibility, almost amounting to delusion. She created an ideal world around her, and peopled it with creatures of her own imagination, rather than the men and women of flesh and blood among whom she lived—a defect of youth which age and experience would rectify. She possessed that gift, so rare in women, of charming involuntarily—without effort or self-consciousness. When most attractive and most admired, she alone was unconscious of it; envy itself was disarmed by her ingenuous humility.
Louise was twenty-three years old when she was presented to the Queen at Fontainebleau by the Principessa di Mantua, during her morning reception. The saloon was filled with company, and great curiosity was felt to see the successor of Mademoiselle de Hautefort. The most critical observers were satisfied. The new maid of honour, though modest and a little abashed, comported herself with perfect self-possession. She was superbly dressed, had a tall and supple figure, good features, and a complexion so exquisitely fair and fresh, and such an abundance of sunny hair, as to remind many in the circle of her Majesty when, in the dazzling beauty of her fifteenth year, she came a bride into France. But Anne of Austria never had those large appealing grey eyes, beaming with all the confidence of a guileless heart, nor that air of maiden reserve which lent an unconscious charm to every movement, nor that calm and placid brow, unruffled by so much as an angry thought.