Page:Memoirs of Madame de Motteville on Anne of Austria and her court.djvu/35

Rh except through wise reflection, which we all owe to ourselves, but which does not come until the occasion to do better has passed."

She knows what the grand airs of independence assumed by those whom favour rebuffs too often signify ; she understands the showy pride which melts at the first advance and turns to meanness. Mazarin, who cannot use her, as he wished, for a creature of his own beside the queen, cavils at her, makes her sometimes uneasy, and keeps her on the qui vive: that is his system when he is not sure of people.

"As he did not know my intentions, and judged me by the opinion he held of the universal corruption of the world, he could not keep himself from suspecting that I was mixed up in many things contrary to his interests. He told me one day that he was convinced of this because I never told him anything of others; I listened to the malcontents, and must therefore be in their confidence."

And, in truth, more than one malcontent was not afraid to confide in Madame de Motteville, even where there was no intimacy, and they spoke to her "as to a person who had the reputation of knowing how to hold her tongue." This was precisely what displeased Mazarin and made him complain of her. "That reproach," she adds, "shows his natural distrust and how unfortunate we were in living under the power of a man who loved double-dealing and with whom integrity had so little value that he thought it a crime." These complaints of the cardinal, which did not fail to transpire, she endeavoured to offset by certain kind words of the queen which counteracted the impression before others; "for at Court," she remarks, "it is easy to dazzle spectators ; we must never give them the pleasure of knowing we are not as fortunate as they imagine, or as unfortunate as they desire."