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Updated: July 27, 2025
So states the Duchess de Nemours, the enemy of the Fronde and the Condés, and who, having given herself to the Court party, must have well known its intentions. De Retz likewise doubts not that the Queen combated an alliance so evidently opposed to her interests. Madame de Motteville, the Queen's close friend, avows it.
"Her mind," says the indulgent Madame de Motteville, "was not so fine as her person; her brilliancy was limited to her eyes, which commanded love. She claimed universal admiration." In regard to her character, all are unanimous. De Retz, who knew her well, speaks of her in these terms: "Madame de Montbazon was a very great beauty. Modesty was wanting in her air.
The Regent had not then thought of summoning such an important assembly, and his weakness and vacillation were such that no one thought he would dare to do so. The memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, of Joly, of Madame Motteville, had turned all heads. These books had become so fashionable, that in no class was the man or woman who did not have them continually in hand.
The driver, who was the mail carrier for Maronne, answered civilly: "You must go to Motteville, Corporal. At the first cross-roads you come to, turn to the right keep straight on that will bring you to the station." Corporal Fandor-Vinson thanked the man, and started off in the direction indicated. "All I have to do now," thought he, "is to discover some nice, lonely spot for."...
The old people got out at Motteville with their basket, their ducks and their umbrella, and they heard the woman say to her husband as they went away: "They are no good and are off to that cursed place, Paris."
In the grand gallery of the Palais Royal stood a mahogany table, the bellying legs of which, decorated with Venetian-wrought gold, sparkled and glittered in the light of the flames that rose and fell in the gaping chimney-place. Around this table were seated four persons of note: the aging Maréchal de Villeroi, Madame de Motteville of imperishable memoirs, Anne of Austria, and Cardinal Mazarin.
It is very doubtful whether Madame de Longueville could have so far forgotten herself; but it is not impossible that she may have imagined, as well as her brother, that the fortunes of their house, having emerged more brilliant than ever from so rude a tempest, had no longer to dread the recurrence of further ill-omened shocks. Madame de Motteville, tom. iv., p. 346; Madame de Nemours, p. 106.
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 break-up was already becoming manifest, though nobody could account for it, though no fixed plan was conceived in men's minds. People devoured the memoirs of Cardinal Retz and Madame de Motteville, which had just appeared; people formed from them their judgments upon the great persons and great events which they had seen and depicted.
Up to those last three hours, she had refused to believe that there were degrees in the morality of women, and to admit that they were not all equally virtuous. "She was little regretted by the Queen," Madame de Motteville tells us, "as she had frequently forsaken her interests to follow her own caprices. The minister heard of her death with the feeling one entertains for one's deceased enemy.
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