<h2><SPAN name="link2HCH0043" id="link2HCH0043"></SPAN> Chapter XLIII. An Interview with the Queen-Mother.</h2>
<p>The queen-mother was in the bedroom at the Palais Royal, with Madame de
Motteville and Senora Molina. King Louis, who had been impatiently expected the
whole day, had not made his appearance; and the queen, who was growing
impatient, had often sent to inquire about him. The moral atmosphere of the
court seemed to indicate an approaching storm; the courtiers and the ladies of
the court avoided meeting in the ante-chambers and the corridors in order not
to converse on compromising subjects. Monsieur had joined the king early in the
morning for a hunting-party; Madame remained in her own apartment, cool and
distant to every one; and the queen-mother, after she had said her prayers in
Latin, talked of domestic matters with her two friends in pure Castilian.
Madame de Motteville, who understood the language perfectly, answered her in
French. When the three ladies had exhausted every form of dissimulation and of
politeness, as a circuitous mode of expressing that the king’s conduct
was making the queen and the queen-mother pine away through sheer grief and
vexation, and when, in the most guarded and polished phrases, they had
fulminated every variety of imprecation against Mademoiselle de la Valliere,
the queen-mother terminated her attack by an exclamation indicative of her own
reflections and character. “<i>Estos hijos!</i>” said she to
Molina—which means, “These children!” words full of meaning
on a mother’s lips—words full of terrible significance in the mouth
of a queen who, like Anne of Austria, hid many curious secrets in her soul.</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Molina, “children, children! for whom every
mother becomes a sacrifice.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” replied the queen; “a mother sacrifices everything,
certainly.” She did not finish her phrase; for she fancied, when she
raised her eyes towards the full-length portrait of the pale Louis XIII., that
light once more flashed from her husband’s dull eyes, and his nostrils
grew livid with wrath. The portrait seemed animated by a living
expression—speak it did not, but it seemed to threaten. A profound
silence succeeded the queen’s last remark. La Molina began to turn over
ribbons and laces on a large work-table. Madame de Motteville, surprised at the
look of mutual intelligence which had been exchanged between the confidant and
her mistress, cast down her eyes like a discreet woman, and pretending to be
observant of nothing that was passing, listened with the utmost attention to
every word. She heard nothing, however, but a very insignificant
“hum” on the part of the Spanish duenna, who was the incarnation of
caution—and a profound sigh on that of the queen. She looked up
immediately.</p>
<p>“You are suffering?” she said.</p>
<p>“No, Motteville, no; why do you say that?”</p>
<p>“Your majesty almost groaned just now.”</p>
<p>“You are right; I did sigh, in truth.”</p>
<p>“Monsieur Valot is not far off; I believe he is in Madame’s
apartment.”</p>
<p>“Why is he with Madame?”</p>
<p>“Madame is troubled with nervous attacks.”</p>
<p>“A very fine disorder, indeed! There is little good in M. Valot being
there, when a very different physician would quickly cure Madame.”</p>
<p>Madame de Motteville looked up with an air of great surprise, as she replied,
“Another doctor instead of M. Valot?—whom do you mean?”</p>
<p>“Occupation, Motteville, occupation. If any one is really ill, it is my
poor daughter.”</p>
<p>“And your majesty, too.”</p>
<p>“Less so this evening, though.”</p>
<p>“Do not believe that too confidently, madame,” said De Motteville.
And, as if to justify her caution, a sharp, acute pain seized the queen, who
turned deadly pale, and threw herself back in the chair, with every symptom of
a sudden fainting fit. Molina ran to a richly gilded tortoise-shell cabinet,
from which she took a large rock-crystal bottle of scented salts, and held it
to the queen’s nostrils, who inhaled it wildly for a few minutes, and
murmured:</p>
<p>“It is hastening my death—but Heaven’s will be done!”</p>
<p>“Your majesty’s death is not so near at hand,” added Molina,
replacing the smelling-bottle in the cabinet.</p>
<p>“Does your majesty feel better now?” inquired Madame de Motteville.</p>
<p>“Much better,” returned the queen, placing her finger on her lips,
to impose silence on her favorite.</p>
<p>“It is very strange,” remarked Madame de Motteville, after a pause.</p>
<p>“What is strange?” said the queen.</p>
<p>“Does your majesty remember the day when this pain attacked you for the
first time?”</p>
<p>“I remember only that it was a grievously sad day for me,
Motteville.”</p>
<p>“But your majesty did not always regard that day as a sad one.”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“Because three and twenty years ago, on that very day, his present
majesty, your own glorious son, was born at the very same hour.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>And, from that moment, Anne of Austria, whose memory and reason seemed to be
suspended for the time, remained impenetrable, with vacant look, mind almost
wandering, and hands hanging heavily down, as if life had almost departed.</p>
<p>“We must put her to bed,” said La Molina.</p>
<p>“Presently, Molina.”</p>
<p>“Let us leave the queen alone,” added the Spanish attendant.</p>
<p>Madame de Motteville rose; large tears were rolling down the queen’s
pallid face; and Molina, having observed this sign of weakness, fixed her black
vigilant eyes upon her.</p>
<p>“Yes, yes,” replied the queen. “Leave us, Motteville;
go.”</p>
<p>The word “us” produced a disagreeable effect upon the ears of the
French favorite; for it signified that an interchange of secrets, or of
revelations of the past, was about to be made, and that one person was <i>de
trop</i> in the conversation which seemed likely to take place.</p>
<p>“Will Molina, alone, be sufficient for your majesty to-night?”
inquired the French woman.</p>
<p>“Yes,” replied the queen. Madame de Motteville bowed in submission,
and was about to withdraw, when suddenly an old female attendant, dressed as if
she had belonged to the Spanish court of the year 1620, opened the door, and
surprised the queen in her tears. “The remedy!” she cried,
delightedly, to the queen, as she unceremoniously approached the group.</p>
<p>“What remedy?” said Anne of Austria.</p>
<p>“For your majesty’s sufferings,” the former replied.</p>
<p>“Who brings it?” asked Madame de Motteville, eagerly;
“Monsieur Valot?”</p>
<p>“No; a lady from Flanders.”</p>
<p>“From Flanders? Is she Spanish?” inquired the queen.</p>
<p>“I don’t know.”</p>
<p>“Who sent her?”</p>
<p>“M. Colbert.”</p>
<p>“Her name?”</p>
<p>“She did not mention it.”</p>
<p>“Her position in life?”</p>
<p>“She will answer that herself.”</p>
<p>“Who is she?”</p>
<p>“She is masked.”</p>
<p>“Go, Molina; go and see!” cried the queen.</p>
<p>“It is needless,” suddenly replied a voice, at once firm and gentle
in its tone, which proceeded from the other side of the tapestry hangings; a
voice which made the attendants start, and the queen tremble excessively. At
the same moment, a masked female appeared through the hangings, and, before the
queen could speak a syllable she added, “I am connected with the order of
the Beguines of Bruges, and do, indeed, bring with me the remedy which is
certain to effect a cure of your majesty’s complaint.” No one
uttered a sound, and the Beguine did not move a step.</p>
<p>“Speak,” said the queen.</p>
<p>“I will, when we are alone,” was the answer.</p>
<p>Anne of Austria looked at her attendants, who immediately withdrew. The
Beguine, thereupon, advanced a few steps towards the queen, and bowed
reverently before her. The queen gazed with increasing mistrust at this woman,
who, in her turn, fixed a pair of brilliant eyes upon her, through her mask.</p>
<p>“The queen of France must, indeed, be very ill,” said Anne of
Austria, “if it is known at the Beguinage of Bruges that she stands in
need of being cured.”</p>
<p>“Your majesty is not irremediably ill.”</p>
<p>“But tell me how you happen to know I am suffering?”</p>
<p>“Your majesty has friends in Flanders.”</p>
<p>“Since these friends, then, sent you, mention their names.”</p>
<p>“Impossible, madame, since your majesty’s memory has not been
awakened by your heart.”</p>
<p>Anne of Austria looked up, endeavoring to discover through the mysterious mask,
and this ambiguous language, the name of her companion, who expressed herself
with such familiarity and freedom; then, suddenly, wearied by a curiosity which
wounded every feeling of pride in her nature, she said, “You are
ignorant, perhaps, that royal personages are never spoken to with the face
masked.”</p>
<p>“Deign to excuse me, madame,” replied the Beguine, humbly.</p>
<p>“I cannot excuse you. I may, possibly, forgive you, if you throw your
mask aside.”</p>
<p>“I have made a vow, madame, to attend and aid all afflicted and suffering
persons, without ever permitting them to behold my face. I might have been able
to administer some relief to your body and to your mind, too; but since your
majesty forbids me, I will take my leave. Adieu, madame, adieu!”</p>
<p>These words were uttered with a harmony of tone and respect of manner that
disarmed the queen of all anger and suspicion, but did not remove her feeling
of curiosity. “You are right,” she said; “it ill-becomes
those who are suffering to reject the means of relief Heaven sends them. Speak,
then; and may you, indeed, be able, as you assert, to administer relief to my
body—”</p>
<p>“Let us first speak a little of the mind, if you please,” said the
Beguine—“of the mind, which, I am sure, must also suffer.”</p>
<p>“My mind?”</p>
<p>“There are cancers so insidious in their nature that their very
pulsations cannot be felt. Such cancers, madame, leave the ivory whiteness of
the skin unblemished, and putrefy not the firm, fair flesh, with their blue
tints; the physician who bends over the patient’s chest hears not, though
he listens, the insatiable teeth of the disease grinding onward through the
muscles, and the blood flows freely on; the knife has never been able to
destroy, and rarely, even temporarily, to disarm the rage of these mortal
scourges,—their home is in the mind, which they corrupt,—they gnaw
the whole heart until it breaks. Such, madame, are the cancers fatal to queens;
are you, too, free from their scourge?”</p>
<p>Anne slowly raised her arm, dazzling in its perfect whiteness, and pure in its
rounded outlines as it was in the time of her earlier days.</p>
<p>“The evils to which you allude,” she said, “are the condition
of the lives of the high in rank upon earth, to whom Heaven has imparted mind.
When those evils become too heavy to be borne, Heaven lightens their burdens by
penitence and confession. Thus, only, we lay down our burden and the secrets
that oppress us. But, forget not that the same gracious Heaven, in its mercy,
apportions to their trials the strength of the feeble creatures of its hand;
and my strength has enabled me to bear my burden. For the secrets of others,
the silence of Heaven is more than sufficient; for my own secrets, that of my
confessor is enough.”</p>
<p>“You are as courageous, madame, I see, as ever, against your enemies. You
do not acknowledge your confidence in your friends?”</p>
<p>“Queens have no friends; if you have nothing further to say to
me,—if you feel yourself inspired by Heaven as a prophetess—leave
me, I pray, for I dread the future.”</p>
<p>“I should have supposed,” said the Beguine, resolutely, “that
you would rather have dreaded the past.”</p>
<p>Hardly had these words escaped her lips, than the queen rose up proudly.
“Speak,” she cried, in a short, imperious tone of voice;
“explain yourself briefly, quickly, entirely; or, if not—”</p>
<p>“Nay, do not threaten me, your majesty,” said the Beguine, gently;
“I came here to you full of compassion and respect. I came here on the
part of a friend.”</p>
<p>“Prove that to me! Comfort, instead of irritating me.”</p>
<p>“Easily enough, and your majesty will see who is friendly to you. What
misfortune has happened to your majesty during these three and twenty years
past—”</p>
<p>“Serious misfortunes, indeed; have I not lost the king?”</p>
<p>“I speak not of misfortunes of <i>that</i> kind. I wish to ask you, if,
since the birth of the king, any indiscretion on a friend’s part has
caused your majesty the slightest serious anxiety, or distress?”</p>
<p>“I do not understand you,” replied the queen, clenching her teeth
in order to conceal her emotion.</p>
<p>“I will make myself understood, then. Your majesty remembers that the
king was born on the 5th of September, 1638, at a quarter past eleven
o’clock.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” stammered out the queen.</p>
<p>“At half-past twelve,” continued the Beguine, “the dauphin,
who had been baptized by Monseigneur de Meaux in the king’s and your own
presence, was acknowledged as the heir of the crown of France. The king then
went to the chapel of the old Chateau de Saint-Germain, to hear the <i>Te
Deum</i> chanted.”</p>
<p>“Quite true, quite true,” murmured the queen.</p>
<p>“Your majesty’s conferment took place in the presence of Monsieur,
his majesty’s late uncle, of the princes, and of the ladies attached to
the court. The king’s physician, Bouvard, and Honore, the surgeon, were
stationed in the ante-chamber; your majesty slept from three o’clock
until seven, I believe.”</p>
<p>“Yes, yes; but you tell me no more than every one else knows as well as
you and myself.”</p>
<p>“I am now, madame, approaching that which very few persons are acquainted
with. Very few persons, did I say, alas! I might say two only, for formerly
there were but five in all, and, for many years past, the secret has been well
preserved by the deaths of the principal participators in it. The late king
sleeps now with his ancestors; Perronnette, the midwife, soon followed him;
Laporte is already forgotten.”</p>
<p>The queen opened her lips as though to reply; she felt, beneath her icy hand,
with which she kept her face half concealed, the beads of perspiration on her
brow.</p>
<p>“It was eight o’clock,” pursued the Beguine; “the king
was seated at supper, full of joy and happiness; around him on all sides arose
wild cries of delight and drinking of healths; the people cheered beneath the
balconies; the Swiss guards, the musketeers, and the royal guards wandered
through the city, borne about in triumph by the drunken students. Those
boisterous sounds of general joy disturbed the dauphin, the future king of
France, who was quietly lying in the arms of Madame de Hausac, his nurse, and
whose eyes, as he opened them, and stared about, might have observed two crowns
at the foot of his cradle. Suddenly your majesty uttered a piercing cry, and
Dame Perronnette immediately flew to your bedside. The doctors were dining in a
room at some distance from your chamber; the palace, deserted from the
frequency of the irruptions made into it, was without either sentinels or
guards. The midwife, having questioned and examined your majesty, gave a sudden
exclamation as if in wild astonishment, and taking you in her arms, bewildered
almost out of her senses from sheer distress of mind, dispatched Laporte to
inform the king that her majesty the queen-mother wished to see him in her
room. Laporte, you are aware, madame, was a man of the most admirable calmness
and presence of mind. He did not approach the king as if he were the bearer of
alarming intelligence and wished to inspire the terror he himself experienced;
besides, it was not a very terrifying intelligence which awaited the king.
Therefore, Laporte appeared with a smile upon his lips, and approached the
king’s chair, saying to him—‘Sire, the queen is very happy,
and would be still more so to see your majesty.’ On that day, Louis XIII.
would have given his crown away to the veriest beggar for a ‘God bless
you.’ Animated, light-hearted, and full of gayety, the king rose from the
table, and said to those around him, in a tone that Henry IV. might have
adopted,—‘Gentlemen, I am going to see my wife.’ He came to
your beside, madame, at the very moment Dame Perronnette presented to him a
second prince, as beautiful and healthy as the former, and
said—‘Sire, Heaven will not allow the kingdom of France to fall
into the female line.’ The king, yielding to a first impulse, clasped the
child in his arms, and cried, ‘Oh, Heaven, I thank Thee!’”</p>
<p>At this part of her recital, the Beguine paused, observing how intensely the
queen was suffering; she had thrown herself back in her chair, and with her
head bent forward and her eyes fixed, listened without seeming to hear, and her
lips moving convulsively, either breathing a prayer to Heaven or imprecations
on the woman standing before her.</p>
<p>“Ah! I do not believe that, if, because there could be but one dauphin in
France,” exclaimed the Beguine, “the queen allowed that child to
vegetate, banished from his royal parents’ presence, she was on that
account an unfeeling mother. Oh, no, no; there are those alive who have known
and witnessed the passionate kisses she imprinted on that innocent creature in
exchange for a life of misery and gloom to which state policy condemned the
twin brother of Louis XIV.”</p>
<p>“Oh! Heaven!” murmured the queen feebly.</p>
<p>“It is admitted,” continued the Beguine, quickly, “that when
the king perceived the effect which would result from the existence of two
sons, equal in age and pretensions, he trembled for the welfare of France, for
the tranquillity of the state; and it is equally well known that Cardinal de
Richelieu, by the direction of Louis XIII., thought over the subject with deep
attention, and after an hour’s meditation in his majesty’s cabinet,
he pronounced the following sentence:—‘One prince means peace and
safety for the state; two competitors, civil war and anarchy.’”</p>
<p>The queen rose suddenly from her seat, pale as death, and her hands clenched
together:</p>
<p>“You know too much,” she said, in a hoarse, thick voice,
“since you refer to secrets of state. As for the friends from whom you
have acquired this secret, they are false and treacherous. You are their
accomplice in the crime which is being now committed. Now, throw aside your
mask, or I will have you arrested by my captain of the guards. Do not think
that this secret terrifies me! You have obtained it, you shall restore it to
me. Never shall it leave your bosom, for neither your secret nor your own life
belong to you from this moment.”</p>
<p>Anne of Austria, joining gesture to the threat, advanced a couple of steps
towards the Beguine.</p>
<p>“Learn,” said the latter, “to know and value the fidelity,
the honor, and secrecy of the friends you have abandoned.” And, then,
suddenly she threw aside her mask.</p>
<p>“Madame de Chevreuse!” exclaimed the queen.</p>
<p>“With your majesty, the sole living <i>confidante</i> of the
secret.”</p>
<p>“Ah!” murmured Anne of Austria; “come and embrace me,
duchesse. Alas! you kill your friend in thus trifling with her terrible
distress.”</p>
<p>And the queen, leaning her head upon the shoulder of the old duchesse, burst
into a flood of bitter tears. “How young you are—still!” said
the latter, in a hollow voice; “you can weep!”</p>
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