The friseur was engaged in this critical
operation, and whole ranks of ladies stood round, one of them reading
aloud one of Plutarch's Lives. The Queen came forward, with the most
perfect grace, crying: 'Oh, it is ravishing! What a coincidence!' and
pointing to her son, as if the similarity in colours had been a mere
chance instead of a contrivance of hers.
Then, with the most gracious deference in the world, so as not to
hurt the hairdresser's feelings, she showed my head, and begged
permission to touch up her niece's, kissing her as she did so. Then
she signed to the Prince to hold her little hand-mirror, and he
obeyed, kneeling on one knee before Mademoiselle; while the Queen,
with hands that really were more dexterous than those of any one I
ever saw, excepting my mother, dealt with her niece's hair, paying
compliments in her son's name all the time, and keeping him in check
with her eye. She contrived to work in some of her own jewels,
rubies and diamonds, to match the scarlet, black and white. I have
since found the scene mentioned in Mademoiselle's own memoirs, but
she did not see a quarter of the humour of it. She was serene in the
certainty that her aunt was paying court to her, and the assurance
that her cousin was doing the same, though she explains that, having
hopes of the Emperor, and thinking the Prince a mere landless exile,
she only pitied him. Little did she guess how he laughed at her, his
mother, and himself, most of all at her airs, while his mother,
scolding him all the time, joined in the laugh, though she always
maintained that Mademoiselle, in spite of her overweening conceit and
vanity, would become an excellent and faithful wife, and make her
husband's interests her own.
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