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Rh TEN TEAKS LATER. 485 passing an hour in the morning and one in the evening with his mother; but, since he liacl himself undertaken the conduct of state affairs, the duration of the morning and evening's visit had been reduced to half; and then, by de- grees, the morning visit had been suppressed altogether. They met at mass; the evening visit was replaced by a meeting either at the king's assembly or at madame's, which the queen attended obligingly enough out of regard to her two sons. The result was, that madame had acquired an immense influence over the court, which made her apart- ments the true royal place of meeting. This Anne of Austria had perceived; feeling herself to be suffering, and condemned by her sufferings to frequent retirement, she was distressed at the idea that the greater part of her future days and evenings would pass away solitary, useless, and in despondency. She recalled with terror the isolation in which Cardinal Richelieu had formerly left her, those drfeaded and insupportable evenings, during which, how- ever, she had her youth and beauty, which are always accompanied by hope, to console her. She next formed the project of transporting the court to her own apartments, and of attracting madame, with her brilliant escort, to her gloomy and already sorrowful abode, where the widow of a king of France and the mother of a king of France was re- duced to console, in her anticipated widowhood, the always weeping wife of a king of France. Anne began to reflect. She had intrigued a good deal in her life. In the good times past, when her youthful mind nursed projects which were invariably successful, she then had by her side, to stimulate her ambition and her love, a friend of her own sex, more eager, more ambitious than her- self, a friend who had loved her, a rare circumstance at court, and whom some petty considerations had removed from her forever. But for many years past — except Mme. de Motteville, and except La Molena, her Spanish nurse, a confidante in her character of countrywoman and woman too — who could boast of having given good advice to the queen? Who, too, among all the youthful heads there, could recall the past for her, that past in which alone she lived? Anne of Austria remembered Mme. de -Chevreuse, in the first place exiled rather by her wish than the king's, and then dying in exile, the wife of a gentleman of obscure birth and position. She asked herself what Mme. de Chevreuse would formerly have advised her in a similar circumstance, in their mutual difficulties, arising from their