They met at mass; the evening visit was replaced by a meeting, either at the king's assembly, or at Madame's, which the queen attended obligingly enough, out of regard to her two sons.

The result was that Madame had acquired an immense influence over the court, which made her apartments the true royal place of meeting.

This, Anne of Austria had perceived; feeling herself to be suffering, and condemned by her sufferings to frequent retirement, she was distressed at the idea that the greater part of her future days and evenings would pass away solitary, useless, and in despondency.

She recalled with terror the isolation in which Cardinal Richelieu had formerly left her, those dreaded and insupportable evenings during which, however, she had her youth and beauty, which are always accompanied by hope, to console her.
She next formed the project of transporting the court to her own apartments, and of attracting Madame, with her brilliant escort, to her gloomy and already sorrowful abode, where the widow of a king of France, and the mother of a king of France, was reduced to console, in her anticipated widowhood, the always weeping wife of a king of France.
Anne began to reflect.

She had intrigued a good deal in her life.