"She will want no one as long as she has Mazarin," says the Duchess, with a sneer.
"So I fear," returns Madame de Chevreuse.
"But what has happened since I left the palace?" again eagerly asks Madame de Noailles.
"I will tell you. I have never been the same to her Majesty since the old days, when I was banished, after the Val de Grâce, by Richelieu. She received me well after I returned, when she was Regent; but I have loved her too devotedly not to feel the difference. While, on my side, the long years that I had spent flying over Europe to escape the machinations of the Cardinal, had only made me more devoted to her, the Queen—who formerly trusted me with every thought—had grown serious, reserved, and ascetic. I am pious enough myself,"—and a gleam of fun passes into her weary face, and causes her eyes to sparkle,—"I never eat meat in Lent, and always confess at Easter. But her Majesty has become a bigot. She was always reproving me, too, for those little agaceries (vanities she called them) which no one lives without. 'My age,' she said, 'forbade them.' Now I only own to forty, Duchess; that is not an age to go into a convent, and to think of nothing but my soul. Why should I not enjoy myself a little yet?" And her large eyes find their way to a mirror opposite, and dwell on it with evident complacency.
"But the Queen reproaches everybody," returns Madame de Noailles. "Conceive—she reprimanded me for wearing a dress too décolleté."
Madame de Chevreuse smiles faintly; for it was indeed true that the older Madame de Noailles grew, the lower her dresses were cut.
"People who hated me made the Queen believe," continues Madame de Chevreuse, "that I wanted to govern her—to use her patronage. If it were so, I should have done it long ago. It was the Princesse de Condé who told the Queen so; she hates me. When I assured her Majesty that it was false, she seemed to believe me. Then came the affair of Madame de Montbazon and the letters found in her room, one of which she said was written by the Duchesse de Longueville, the daughter of my enemy, the Princesse de Condé. How could I help what my stepmother said?—she is a spoilt beauty, and very injudicious—but her Majesty blamed me, nevertheless. I implored her to forgive my stepmother; and for this purpose, I offered her Majesty yesterday a collation in those fine gardens, kept by Regnard, beyond the chestnut avenue of the Tuileries—you know these gardens, Duchess?"
"I do," replies Madame de Noailles.
"Her Majesty had often wished to go there. I asked my stepmother to be present, in the full belief that the Queen's kind heart would relent when she saw her, and that she would restore her to favour. Alas! I was mistaken. I do not know the Queen now, she is so changed. She came accompanied by the Princesse de Condé. No sooner had she set eyes on Madame de Montbazon, who was conversing with me, than the Queen gave me a furious glance, called the Princesse de Condé to her side, and bid her command the attendance of her pages; then, without another word, her Majesty turned her back on me, entered her coach, and departed."