She was handsome to the last, and young in mind and in
habits long after youth had left her. I was said to be the image of what
she was when she rivalled Madame de Hautefort in the affections of the late
King. You must consider, sweetheart, that he was the most moral of men,
and that with him love meant a passion as free from sensual taint as the
preferences of a sylph. I think my good grandmother loved me all the better
for this fancied resemblance. She would arrange her jewels about my hair
and bosom, as she had worn them when Buckingham came wooing for his master;
and then she would bid her page hold a mirror before me and tell me to look
at the face of which Queen Anne had been jealous, and for which Cinq Mars
had run mad. And then she would shed a tear or two over the years and the
charms that were gone, till I brought the cards and cheered her spirits
with her favourite game of primero.
"She had her fits of temper and little tantrums sometimes, Ange, and it
needed some patience to restrain one's tongue from insolence; but I am
happy to remember that I ever bore her in profound respect, and that I
never made her seriously angry but once--which was when I, being then
almost a child, went out into the streets of Paris with Henri de Malfort
and a wild party, masked, to hear Beaufort address the populace in the
market-place, and when I was so unlucky as to lose the emerald cross
given her by the great Cardinal, for whom, I believe, she had a sneaking
kindness.
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