Page:Memoirs of Madame de Motteville on Anne of Austria and her court.djvu/30

8 has the merit of appreciating equitably his superior points. Many of those whom Mazarin dismissed were friends of Madame de Motteville; she does not abandon them when they fall; she visits, consoles, and even tries in some cases to defend them to the queen. By this sincerity of action she does herself harm with the minister ; but the queen has enough elevation of heart to forgive her all such proofs of integrity and, after a first coolness, to bear no resentment to her.

If Ann P. of Austria were more interesting than she appears to us in history, we might adopt from Madame de Motteville the various portraits she has made of her which are full of noble beauty and majesty. The waiting-woman (for here Madame de Motteville is somewhat that) shows us her royal mistress with admiration and love from the moment she wakes and rises and is given her chemise to that of her supper and coucher. Her widow's mourning became the queen, and she lost something by quitting it. She was at that time forty years old, "an age so dreadful for our sex," says Madame de Motteville; but she triumphed over it by a stately appearance as sovereign and mother.

All the portraits given by Madame de Motteville are fine and made almost without intention. In the troubles which soon arose she shows us qualities in the queen which it would be unjust to refuse her amid her faults; she had courage and pride; "the blood of Charles V. gave her a lofty dignity," and boiled in her veins. To such descriptions of Anne of Austria, a little partial but not false, we must always add, and hear, the " sharp little voice " she had when angry, the tone of which Retz has so well conveyed.

The Queen of England, magnificently lauded by Bossuet, is pictured more familiarly by Madame de Motteville, who knew her well; and this time it is she who gives to that figure, solemnized in the funeral oration, the touch of reality.