Queen Henrietta bade me
take care what I was doing. Thus Cardinal Mazarin being absent, and
the events of former years not brought to mind, it was possible to
obtain permission to retire for a time to our estates. Indeed I
fancy it was meant to disgrace two such Frondeuses as we were
supposed to have been.
Cecile recovered something like health in the country, but she would
not hear of doing anything save entering a convent. She longed to be
constantly praying for her husband, and she felt herself utterly
incapable of coping with the world, or educating her son. She took
her little girl with her to be a pensionnaire at the Visitation, and
entrusted her boy to me, to be brought up with mine. They have
indeed always been like brothers, and to me the tenderest and most
dutiful of sons. Maurice d'Aubepine never ceased to love his own
mother, but as a sort of saint in a shrine, and he used to say that
when he went to see her he always felt more as if he had been
worshipping than making a visit.
I had learned a little prudence by my former disasters among the
peasantry at Nid de Merle, and we did contrive to make them somewhat
happier and more prosperous without giving umbrage to our neighbours.
They learned to love M. le Marquis with passionate devotion, and he
has loved them in his turn with equal affection. I delight to hear
the shouts of ecstasy with which they receive him when he is seen
riding through the narrow lanes of the Bocage on a visit to his
mother and his home.
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