Madame de Motteville, who understood the language perfectly, answered her in French. When the three ladies had exhausted every form of dissimulation and of politeness, as a circuitous mode of expressing that the king’s conduct was making the queen and the queen-mother pine away through sheer grief and vexation, and when, in the most guarded and polished phrases, they had fulminated every variety of imprecation against Mademoiselle de la Valliere, the queen-mother terminated her attack by an exclamation indicative of her own reflections and character. “Estos hijos!” said she to Molina — which means, “These children!” words full of meaning on a mother’s lips — words full of terrible significance in the mouth of a queen who, like Anne of Austria, hid many curious secrets in her soul.