I therefore spoke to Monsieur the Cardinal
on the subject, bringing forward as an important precedent in my favor,
that the Queen-mother had always kissed the princesses of the blood"; and
so on through many pages. Thus lapsed her youth of frolics into an old age
of cards.
It is a slight compensation, that this very pettiness makes her chronicles
of the age very vivid in details. How she revels in the silver brocades,
the violet-colored velvet robes, the crimson velvet carpets, the purple
damask curtains fringed with gold and silver, the embroidered _fleurs de
lis_, the wedding-caskets, the cordons of diamonds, the clusters of
emeralds _en poires_ with diamonds, and the Isabelle-colored linen,
whereby hangs a tale! She still kept up her youthful habit of avoiding the
sick-rooms of her kindred, but how magnificently she mourned them when
they died! Her brief, genuine, but quite unexpected sorrow for her father
was speedily assuaged by the opportunity it gave her to introduce the
fashion of gray mourning, instead of black; it had previously, it seems,
been worn by widows only. Servants and horses were all put in deep black,
however, and "the court observed that I was very _magnifique_ in all my
arrangements." On the other hand, be it recorded, that our Mademoiselle,
chivalrous royalist to the last, was the only person at the French court
who refused to wear mourning for the usurper Cromwell!
But, if thus addicted to funeral pageants, it is needless to say that
weddings occupied their full proportion of her thoughts.
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