Gaston d'Anjou had attained his seventeenth year; and although of more robust temperament than the King, he was const.i.tutionally indolent and undecided. His after-history proves him to have been alike an incapable diplomatist, a timid leader, and a false and fickle friend; but as yet no suspicion of his courage or good faith had been entertained by any party, and he was consequently the centre around which rallied every cabal in turn. He was moreover, as we have already stated, the favourite son of the Queen-mother, who saw in him not only a cherished child but also a political ally. By securing the support of Gaston, Marie believed that she should be the more readily enabled to maintain her influence, and to protect herself against any future aggression on the part of Louis, with whom she felt her apparent reconciliation to be at once hollow and unstable; and as the vain and vacillating character of the Prince readily lent itself to the projects of each cabal in succession, so long as it did not interfere with his pleasures, every party in turn believed him to be devoted to its especial interests, and calculated upon his support whenever the struggle should commence. Thus, while himself jealous of Louis, whose crown he envied, Gaston d'Anjou was no less an object of distrust and terror to the King; who, whatever may have been his other defects, was never found deficient in personal courage; and who could not consequently comprehend that with every inclination to play the conspirator, the young Prince was utterly incapable of guiding or even supporting any party powerful and honest enough openly to declare itself.

Under these circ.u.mstances, however, it is not surprising that the marriage of the heir-apparent should have excited the most absorbing interest not only at the French Court, but throughout all Europe. The health of Louis XIII continued feeble and uncertain; he rallied slowly and painfully after each successive attack; and since the visit of the Duke of Buckingham to Paris his repugnance to Anne of Austria had become more marked than ever; while the young Queen in her turn resented his neglect with augmented bitterness, and loudly complained of the injustice to which she should be subjected were the children of Gaston d'Anjou to inherit the throne of France. The Princes of the Blood supported Anne in this objection; for neither Conde nor the Comte de Soissons could, as a natural consequence, regard with favour any measure which must tend to diminish the chances of their own succession; while the latter, moreover, desired to become himself the husband of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and the Princesse de Conde aspired to unite her own daughter, still a mere infant, to the brother of the King. The other great n.o.bles were also disinclined to see the young Prince form so close an alliance with the Duc de Guise; and the Duke of Savoy was eager to bestow on him the hand of Marie de Gonzaga, the heiress of Montferrat, and thus to secure to himself a powerful ally against the perpetual aggressions of his numerous enemies.

D'Ornano, as we have seen, had been commanded to renew the negotiation of marriage between Gaston and the bride destined for him by Henri IV, but private reasons decided him against the measure; and, in consequence of his representations, the Prince formally refused to obey the expressed wishes of the King. The moment was a favourable one for Richelieu, who had long sought a pretext for ridding himself of Monsieur's favourite friend and counsellor; and he accordingly lost no time in impressing upon Louis that, as the young Prince was entirely governed by M. d'Ornano, no concession could be expected from him until that individual had been removed from about his person. Nor was the Marechal alone an object of suspicion and uneasiness to the minister, for it was not long ere he ascertained that the party of the Prince was hourly becoming more formidable, and that were the cabal not crushed in its infancy, it might very soon tend to endanger at once the safety of the sovereign and the tranquillity of the kingdom; while he also learned through his emissaries that his own security was no less involved in the issue than that of Louis himself.

Under these circ.u.mstances Richelieu at once felt that the only method by which he could hope to control Gaston was by proceeding with the utmost severity against all such persons as should be convicted of endeavouring to excite the mind of the Prince against his royal brother; a policy which Louis eagerly adopted. In accordance with this resolution, during the sojourn of the Court at Fontainebleau in the month of May, the King on his return from a hunting-party, after having retired to rest, suddenly rose again, dressed himself, and at ten o'clock at night summoned M. d'Ornano to his presence, whom he entertained for a time with an account of the day's sport, and other inconsequent conversation, until Du Hallier, the captain of the bodyguard, made his appearance at the head of his archers, and approaching the Marechal, announced to him that he was his prisoner; requesting him to withdraw from the royal apartment, whence he conducted him to the chamber in which the Duc de Biron had been confined twenty-four years previously,[95] while Madame d'Ornano at the same time received an order to quit Paris upon the instant, and the two brothers of the disgraced courtier, together with MM. Deageant, Modena, and other partisans of the Marechal, were also arrested.

By this bold stroke of policy the Cardinal effectually paralyzed the power of Monsieur; although this conviction was far from allaying his personal apprehensions. Among the favourites of the Prince he had equally marked for destruction the young Prince de Chalais,[96] the Duc de Vendome, and his brother the Grand Prior; but Richelieu feared by venturing too much to lose all, for his authority had not at that period reached its acme; and he felt all the danger which he must incur by adopting measures of such violence against two Princes of the Blood.

The indignation of Monsieur was, moreover, thoroughly excited, and he did not scruple either to reproach his royal brother, or to utter threats against those who had aided in the arrest of the Marechal, whose restoration to liberty he vehemently demanded; and as his representations failed to produce the desired effect, he indulged in a thousand extravagances which only tended to strengthen the hands and to forward the views of Richelieu, who found no difficulty in widening the breach between Louis and the imprudent Prince by whom his authority was openly questioned. In vain did Marie de Medicis endeavour to impress upon him the danger of such ill-advised violence, Gaston persisted in upholding his favourite; until the King, irritated beyond endurance, exhibited such marked displeasure towards his brother that the weak and timid Prince began to entertain fears for his own safety, and became suddenly as abject as he had previously been haughty; abandoned D'Ornano to his fate; and after signing an act, in which he promised all honour and obedience to the sovereign, carried his condescension so far as to visit the Cardinal at his residence at Limours, whither he had retired on the pretext of indisposition.

Richelieu triumphed: and ere long the Duc de Vendome and his brother were arrested in their turn, and conveyed to the citadel of Amboise. The Comte de Soissons, the second Prince of the Blood, fled the Court in alarm, and took refuge in Savoy; while edict after edict was fulminated against the n.o.bles, which threatened all their old and long-cherished privileges. The costume of each separate cla.s.s was determined with a minuteness of detail which exasperated the magnificent courtiers, who had been accustomed to attire themselves in embroidery and cloth of gold, in rich laces, and plumed and jewelled hats, and who suddenly found themselves reduced to a sobriety of costume repugnant to their habits; the Comte de Bouteville, of the haughty house of Montmorency, who had dared to disregard the revived law against duelling, lost his head upon the scaffold; and all castles, to whomsoever belonging, which could not aid in the protection of the frontiers, or of the towns near which they were situated, were ordered to be demolished.

The reign of Richelieu had commenced.

Meanwhile the Court had taken up its residence at Fontainebleau; where Louis, deaf to the murmurs of his great n.o.bles, pa.s.sed his time in hunting, a sport of which he was pa.s.sionately fond; while Marie de Medicis and the Cardinal endeavoured, by every species of dissipation, to lull him into acquiescence with the perilous measures they were adopting.

Always sickly and querulous, Louis was a prey to dark thoughts and fearful antic.i.p.ations of early dissolution; and even while he suffered himself to be amused by the hawking, dancing, and feasting so lavishly provided for his entertainment, he was never at fault, during his frequent fits of moroseness and ill-humour, for subjects of complaint.

His brother, Gaston d'Anjou, whom he at once feared and hated, was a constant theme of distrust; while the Comte de Soissons, the Duc de Montmorency, and the Prince de Chalais, his sworn adherents, were at times equally obnoxious to the suspicious and gloomy young sovereign.

Then he bewailed the treachery of the Queen, whom he believed, through the agency of Richelieu, to be engaged in an intrigue with Spain dangerous to his own interests; mourned over himself because he had weakly suffered his authority to be usurped by a subject, and had not moral courage to redeem the error; and in his most confidential moments even inveighed against Richelieu with the bitterness of a sullen schoolboy, declaring that it was he who had poisoned the mind of his brother, estranged him from his wife, and deprived him of the support of the Princes of the Blood; forgetting, or wilfully overlooking the fact, that a single effort on his own part must have sufficed for his emanc.i.p.ation from this rule of iron.

On the departure of the Court for Fontainebleau, the Cardinal, according to his usual custom, had excused himself on the plea of ill-health from following the King; while Gaston d'Anjou, who, despite the concession that he had made, still deeply resented the affront to which he had been subjected by the arrest of his favourite, had remained in Paris.

Richelieu, was, however, far from inactive in his retreat; but, while he was occupied in further schemes of self-aggrandizement, the partisans of the Prince were equally busy in devising the means of ridding themselves of a thrall so obnoxious to their pride; and after mooting several measures which were successively abandoned from their apparent impracticability, it was at length decided that, under the pretext of a hunting-party, nine of the conspirators should proceed to Fleury, and there a.s.sa.s.sinate their common enemy. Of this number was the unfortunate Chalais; who, however, before the execution of the project, confided it to a friend, by whom he was warned against any partic.i.p.ation in so dangerous an attempt, and advised immediately to apprise the Cardinal of his danger. As the young Prince hesitated to follow this counsel, the Commandeur de Valence, who was anxious to save him from, as he believed, inevitable destruction, a.s.sured him that should he fail to communicate the conspiracy to the minister, he would himself instantly reveal it; upon which Chalais, intimidated by the threat, consented to accompany him to Richelieu, and to confess the whole.

Having listened attentively to all the details of the plot, the Cardinal courteously thanked his informants, and requested them to proceed to Fontainebleau, and to repeat what they had told him to the King. He was obeyed; and an hour before midnight Louis despatched a body of troops to Fleury, with instructions to obey the orders of the minister whatever might be their nature; while Marie de Medicis at the same time commanded the officers of her household and a number of the n.o.bility to accompany the royal guards.

As Chalais had a.s.serted, at three o'clock on the following morning the clerks of the kitchen to the Duc d'Anjou arrived at Fleury, and immediately commenced their preparations for the dinner of the Prince; upon which Richelieu caused them to be informed that he should leave the house at the entire disposal of Monsieur; and, escorted by the armed party that had been sent for his protection, he set out at once for Fontainebleau, where he had no sooner arrived than he went without the delay of a moment to the apartment of the King's brother. Gaston was in the act of leaving his bed, and was evidently alarmed by the sudden appearance of so unexpected a visitor; but the Cardinal, affecting not to perceive his embarra.s.sment, merely reproached him in the most courtly terms for the precaution which he had taken, a.s.suring him that he should have felt honoured had he relied upon his hospitality; but adding that, since his Highness had shown himself desirous of avoiding all restraint, he was happy to be at least enabled to offer him the use of his residence. The Prince, taken by surprise, and utterly disconcerted at the failure of so well organized a plot, could only stammer out his acknowledgments; and the Cardinal had no sooner heard them to an end than he requested admission to the King, where, having briefly expatiated upon his escape, he requested permission with ably-acted earnestness to retire from the Court.

As we have shown, Louis was by no means slow in deprecating the self-const.i.tuted authority of Richelieu; but he was nevertheless so well aware of his own incapacity, that the idea of being thus abandoned by a minister whose grasp of intellect and subtle policy had complicated the affairs of government until he was compelled to admit his own utter powerlessness to disentangle the involved and intricate mesh, terrified him beyond expression; nor was Marie de Medicis, whom he hastened to summon on perceiving the apparently resolute position a.s.sumed by Richelieu, less alarmed than himself.

Had the scene been enacted by three individuals of mean station, it would have been merely a painful and a degrading one, for each was alike deceiving and deceived; but as they stood there, a crowned King, a Princess born "under the purple," and a powerful minister, it presented another and a more extraordinary aspect. Stolid and resolute as were alike the mother and the son, they were totally unable to cope with the superior talent and astuteness of the man whom they had themselves raised to power; and before the termination of the interview Richelieu had convinced both that his counsels and services were essential to their own safety.

This point conceded, the wily Cardinal was enabled to make his own terms. He received the most solemn a.s.surances of support, not only against the brother of the sovereign, but also against the Princes of the Blood and all the great n.o.bles; while a promise was moreover made, and ratified, that he should have immediate information of every attempt to injure him in the estimation of the King; and, finally, he was offered a bodyguard, over which he was to possess the most absolute control.

This exhibition of royal weakness strengthened the hands of the haughty minister, who thus became regal in all save name and blood; and encouraged him to pursue his system of dissimulation. As mother and son vied with each other in opening before him the most brilliant perspective ever conceded to a subject, he feigned a reluctance and a humility which only tended to render their entreaties the more earnest and the more pressing; until at length, although with apparent unwillingness, he was prevailed upon to retain his post, and to crush his enemies by the exhibition of a splendour and authority hitherto without parallel in the annals of ministerial life.[97]

It was not to be antic.i.p.ated that under such circ.u.mstances as these the imprudent Chalais could retain one chance of escape. Aware of his favour with the King, his fall at once relieved Richelieu of a rival, and taught the weak and capricious monarch to quail before the power of the man whom he had thus invested with almost unlimited authority; and the natural result ensued. Unwilling to admit that he sought to revenge an attempt against his own person, the Cardinal caused the unfortunate young n.o.ble to be accused of a conspiracy against the life of the King himself, and a design to effect a marriage between Anne of Austria and the Duc d'Anjou. Judges were suborned; a court was a.s.sembled; the gay and gallant Chalais, whose whole existence had hitherto been one round of pleasure and splendour, and who was, as we have fully shown, too timid and too inexperienced to enact, even with the faintest chance of success, the character of a conspirator, was put upon his trial for treason, and condemned to die upon the scaffold; nor did the efforts of his numerous friends avail to avert his fate.

Louis forgot his former affection for his brilliant favourite in his fear of the minister who sought his destruction; while the heartless and ungrateful Gaston, wilfully overlooking the fact that it was in his service that the miserable young man had become compromised, actually appeared as one of his accusers; his relatives were forbidden to intercede in his behalf; and finally, when some zealous friends succeeded in hiding away not only the royal executioner, but also the city functionary, in the hope of delaying his execution, the emissaries of the Cardinal secured the services of a condemned felon, who, on a promise of unconditional pardon, consented to fill the office of headsman; and who, between his inexperience and his horror at his unwonted task, performed his hideous functions so imperfectly that it was only on the thirty-fourth stroke that the head of the martyred young man was severed from his body.[98]

During the progress of this iniquitous trial (which took place in the city of Nantes, whither Louis had proceeded to convoke the States of that province) both Marie de Medicis and Richelieu were a.s.siduously labouring to accomplish the marriage of Gaston with Mademoiselle de Montpensier; nor does there remain the slightest doubt that it was to the splendid promises held out by his mother and her minister on this occasion, that the cowardly and treacherous conduct of the Prince towards his unfortunate adherent must be ascribed. A brilliant appanage was allotted to him; he was to a.s.sume the t.i.tle of Duc d'Orleans; to occupy a post in the Government; and to enjoy a revenue of a million of francs.

Prospects far less flattering than these would have sufficed to purchase Gaston, whose besetting sin throughout his whole life was the most disgusting and inordinate selfishness; but when his consent had been obtained, a new difficulty supervened on the part of the King, whose distrustful character would not permit him to perceive the eagerness with which the Cardinal urged forward the alliance without misgivings which were fostered by his immediate friends. Richelieu, however, soon succeeded by his representations in convincing the suspicious monarch of the policy of thus compelling his brother to a thorough subjection to his own authority, which could not have been enforced had Monsieur allied himself to a Princess of Austria or Spain; an argument which was instantly appreciated, and a royal command was accordingly despatched to the elected bride to join the Court at Nantes, under the escort of the Duc de Bellegarde, the Marechal de Ba.s.sompierre, and the Marquis d'Effiat.

In accordance with this invitation, Mademoiselle de Montpensier arrived at Nantes on the 1st of August; and on the 5th of the same month, while the wretched and deserted Chalais was exposed to the most frightful torture, the marriage took place. "There was little pomp or display,"

says Mezeray, "either at the betrothal or at the nuptial ceremony."

_Feux de joie_ and salvos of artillery alone announced its completion.

The ma.s.s was, however, performed by Richelieu himself; and so thoroughly had he succeeded in convincing Louis of the expediency of the measure, that the delight of the young King was infinitely more conspicuous than that of the bridegroom. The satisfaction of Marie de Medicis, although sufficiently evident, was calm and dignified; but the King embraced the bride on three several occasions; and no one could have imagined from his deportment that he had for a single instant opposed a marriage which now appeared to have fulfilled his most sanguine wishes.[99]

The reign of blood had nevertheless commenced. The head of Chalais fell on the 19th of August; and on the 2nd of September the Marechal d'Ornano expired in his prison; a fate which was shared on the 28th of February 1629 by the Grand Prieur de Vendome, both of these deaths being attributed to poison. Be the fact as it may, thus much is at least, certain, that the Cardinal, not daring to drag two legitimated Princes of the Blood to the scaffold, had gradually rendered their captivity more and more rigorous, as if to prove to the nation over which he had stretched his iron arm that no rank, however elevated, and no name, however ancient, could protect its possessor.

Having accomplished the marriage of the Duc d'Orleans, Richelieu and the Queen-mother next laboured to widen the breach between Louis XIII and his wife; for which purpose they represented that she had taken an active part in the lately detected conspiracy, and was secretly intriguing with Spain against the interests of her royal husband; an attempt in which she had been aided and abetted by her confidential friends.

The first consequence of this accusation was the arrest of Madame de Chevreuse, who, after having undergone a formal examination, was exiled from the Court; and this order had no sooner been obeyed than Anne of Austria was summoned to the presence of the King, whom she found seated between the Queen-mother and the Cardinal, and there solemnly accused, on the pretended revelations of Chalais while under torture, of having intrigued to procure the death of her husband, and her own marriage with his brother. To this accusation the Spanish Princess disdainfully replied that "she should have gained so little by the exchange, that the absurdity of the charge must suffice for its refutation;" but her haughty and indignant retort produced no effect upon her judges. She was commanded thenceforward to reside exclusively at the palaces of the Louvre and St. Germain; without the privilege of receiving a single guest, not even excepting the amba.s.sador of the King her brother, or the Spanish attendants who had accompanied her to France, and, moreover, forbidden all correspondence beyond the limits of the kingdom; while, at the same time, as if to complete her humiliation, she was strictly prohibited from receiving any male visitor in her apartments during the absence of the King.[100]

Although, as we have stated, Richelieu was present at this degrading scene, he nevertheless professed to be perfectly independent of what he thought proper to designate as mere family dissensions, entirely beyond the functions of a minister; and thus the whole odium of the proceedings fell upon Louis XIII and the Queen-mother, while the Cardinal himself remained ostensibly absorbed in public business. Neither the great n.o.bles nor the people were, however, deceived by this a.s.sumed disinterestedness; but all felt alike convinced that the total alienation which supervened between the royal couple was simply a part of the system by which Richelieu sought one day exclusively to govern France. Henriette Marie had left Paris after her betrothal, accompanied by a numerous retinue of French attendants of both s.e.xes, and by several of the priests of the Oratory, attired in their black gowns; and on her arrival at Whitehall she had been permitted to have the services of her religion performed in one of the apartments of that palace; but this concession did not, unhappily, serve to satisfy the exactions of the girl-Queen, who, even during the first days of her residence in England, suffered herself to betray all her antipathy to the heretical country which was hereafter to be her home. At the public ceremonial of her marriage, when the venerable Abbey of Westminster was crowded with princes, bishops, and barons, she refused to receive her crown from the hands of a Protestant prelate, or to bend her knee before the Lord Primate; while at the same time, relying on her youth and the effect which her extreme beauty had produced upon her royal consort, she endeavoured to obtain an ascendency over him that excited the jealousy and distrust of the English Court; a feeling which was not lessened by the fact that she succeeded in extorting from the King his sanction to erect a chapel for the more solemn observance of the rites and ceremonies of her faith. Acting under the influence of Richelieu, who at frequent intervals despatched missionaries to London upon futile errands, with instructions that she should retain them about her person, she moreover soon taught herself to believe that she had a great mission to accomplish; and under this impression she carried her imprudence so far as to authorize a public procession through the streets of London, in which she herself appeared mounted upon a mule, surrounded and followed by all her household, and a crowd of Roman Catholic ecclesiastics.

So wanton a disregard for the feelings of her new subjects excited the indignation of the Parliament, and made them distrustful of the Duke of Buckingham, through whose agency and influence the alliance with France had been formed; while it laid the foundation of those accusations against him which were so warmly refuted by the sovereign. The Parliament was dissolved, and the necessity of raising subsidies engaged the minister in measures which became hostile to the French interests.

An anti-Catholic reaction was declaring itself; and Buckingham at once felt that he could not more effectually satisfy both the Parliament and the people than by suppressing without delay that spirit of religious defiance which was arising in the very palace of the King.

With this conviction he accordingly declared to the young Queen, a few days after the public pilgrimage which she had made, that she must immediately send back to France, not only the members of her household, but also all the ecclesiastics who had induced her so ostentatiously to insult the faith of the nation by which she had been received and welcomed with a warmth that merited more consideration on her part.

Indignant at so peremptory an order, Henriette exhibited an amount of violence which in a mere girl failed to produce the effect that she had antic.i.p.ated. The Duke continued calm and resolute, while she, on her side, vehemently refused to comply with his directions; and after having reproached the sovereign in the most bitter terms for what she designated both as a breach of faith and as an act of tyranny, she summoned the Bishop of Mende, the French Amba.s.sador, to the palace, and instructed him to apprise the King her brother of the insult with which she was threatened.

The prelate approved her resistance: and loudly declared that neither the individuals composing her household, nor the ecclesiastics who were attached to it, should leave England without an order to that effect from their own sovereign; and he forthwith despatched couriers to Paris, to inform the Court of the position of the English Queen; to which Louis replied by insisting that the persons who had accompanied his royal sister to her new kingdom should be permitted to remain about her; in default of which concession he should thenceforward hold himself aggrieved, and become the irreconcilable enemy of the British Government.

The Duke of Buckingham nevertheless persisted in his resolution, and the foreign attendants of Henriette were compelled to return to France, to the excessive indignation of Marie de Medicis, who refused to see in the extreme munificence of Charles towards the exiled household any extenuation of the affront which had been put upon her favourite daughter; while Henriette on her part, far from endeavouring to adapt herself to circ.u.mstances, and to yield with dignified submission to a privation which it was no longer in her power to avert, gave way to all the petulance of a spoiled girl, and overwhelmed the minister with reproaches and even threats. So unmeasured, indeed, were her invectives that at length, when she had on one occasion exhausted alike the temper and the endurance of Buckingham, he so far forgot the respect due to her rank and to her s.e.x, as well as his own chivalry as a n.o.ble, as to retort with an impetuosity little inferior to her own that she had better not proceed too far, "for that in England queens had sometimes lost their heads;" a display of insolence which Henriette never forgot nor forgave, and which was immediately communicated to the French Court.

Time, far from lessening the animosity of the young Queen towards the favourite, or the consequent schism between herself and the King, appeared rather to increase both; and Richelieu, after having for a while contemplated a war with England conjointly with Philip of Spain, ultimately abandoned the idea as dangerous and doubtful to the interests of France. M. de Blainville and the Marquis d'Effiat were despatched to the Court of London with orders to attempt a compromise; but both signally failed; and Louis had no sooner returned to Paris than the Cardinal, who was aware that Buckingham was as anxious to commence hostilities as he was himself desirous to maintain peace, induced the King to despatch Ba.s.sompierre as amba.s.sador-extraordinary to the Court of Whitehall with stringent instructions to effect, if possible, a good understanding between the two countries.

On his arrival in England, however, Ba.s.sompierre discovered to his great consternation that the coldness existing between the English monarch and his Queen was even more serious than had been apprehended at his own Court; and he was met on the very threshold of his task by a declaration from the Duke of Buckingham that Charles would only consent to give him a public audience on condition that he should not touch upon the subject which had brought him to England; as he felt that it was one which must necessarily make him lose his temper, which would be undignified in the presence of his Court and with the Queen at his side; who, angered by the dismissal of her French retinue, would not, as he felt convinced, fail in her turn to be guilty of some extravagance, but would probably shed tears before everybody; and that consequently, without this pledge on the part of the French envoy, he would accord him merely a private interview. Ba.s.sompierre hesitated for a time before he could bring himself to consent to such a compromise of his own dignity and that of his royal master; but, aware of the importance attached by Richelieu to the result of his mission, he at length declared that after having delivered the letters with which he was entrusted, he would leave it to his Majesty to determine the length of the audience, which might be easily abridged by a declaration that the subjects upon which they had to treat would require more time than his Majesty could then command, and that he would consequently appoint an earlier hour for seeing him in private.

This delicate affair having been thus satisfactorily arranged, the public audience took place at Hampton Court. Ba.s.sompierre was introduced into the royal presence by the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Carlisle, and on entering he found the King and Queen seated upon a raised dais, surrounded by a brilliant Court, but both sovereigns rose as he bent before them. Having presented his letters, together with the royal message, Charles, as had been previously arranged, pleaded want of leisure to enter upon public business; upon which the envoy proceeded to pay his respects to the Queen, who briefly replied that his Majesty having given her his permission to return to the capital, she should be able when there to discourse with him at greater length. Ba.s.sompierre then withdrew, and was escorted by all the great n.o.bles to his carriage.

This commencement, as will be at once apparent, was sufficiently unpromising, but the French envoy was in a position of such responsibility that he dared not suffer himself to be discouraged; nor had he been long in England ere he became painfully convinced that the petulance and want of self-control in which Henriette wilfully indulged, daily tended to widen a schism that was already too threatening.

Nevertheless, Ba.s.sompierre remained firmly at his post. Matrimonial feuds in high places were no novelty to the brilliant courtier of Henri IV and the confidant of Marie de Medicis; and he at once felt that he must enact at St. James's the same role as Sully had formerly represented at Fontainebleau and the Louvre; nor did his experience of the past fail, moreover, to convince him of the policy of endeavouring in the first instance to effect a reconciliation between the Queen and the favourite. This was, however, no easy task; but at length the zealous Marquis succeeded in the attempt, as he informs us in his usual nave style.

"On Sunday the 25th," he says, "I went to fetch the Duke and took him with me to the Queen, where he made his peace with her, which I had accomplished after a thousand difficulties. The King afterwards came in, who also made it up with her and caressed her a great deal, thanking me for having restored a good understanding between the Duke and his wife; and then he took me to his chamber, where he showed me his jewels, which are very fine."

On the morrow, however, when Ba.s.sompierre went to pay his respects to Henriette at Somerset House, he discovered that he had personally lost considerably in her favour, as she vehemently complained that he sacrificed her dignity as a Princess of France to expediency; and had espoused the cause of her adversary instead of upholding her own. To these reproaches the French envoy replied by explaining the difficulty of his position, and the earnest desire of his sovereign to maintain peace; but this reasoning did not avail to satisfy the wounded vanity of the girl-Queen; who finally, by her violence, compelled Ba.s.sompierre to remind her that her headstrong egotism was endangering the interests of her royal brother. Incensed at this accusation, Henriette at once wept and recriminated; and finally the French courtier retired from her presence, and hastened to forward a courier to Paris to solicit the interference of the King and his minister, and to request further instructions for his guidance.

A few days subsequently, after he had received urgent letters from the King, by which he was commanded to avoid in every emergency a rupture between the two countries, Ba.s.sompierre again waited upon the Queen, and explained to her the stringent orders of her royal brother; but Henriette persisted in declaring that her actual position was not appreciated at the French Court; and while she was maintaining this argument, despite all the a.s.severations of the bewildered envoy, the arrival of the King was announced. Charles had no sooner entered the apartment than a violent quarrel arose, which threatened such serious consequences that Ba.s.sompierre interposed, a.s.suring the imprudent Princess that should she not control her temper, and acknowledge her error, he would on the following day take leave of his Britannic Majesty, and on his return to Paris explain to the sovereign and the Queen-mother that he had been compelled to abandon his mission entirely through her obstinate and uncompromising violence.

As this threat produced an evident effect upon Henriette, the King had no sooner retired than the Marechal, with admirable tact and temper, represented to the young Queen that at the age of sixteen she was incompetent to appreciate the measures of her royal consort; while by her intemperate language and strong prejudices she was seriously injuring her own cause. Henriette, during her paroxysms of petulance, was deaf to all his remonstrances; but on this occasion she listened with greater patience, and even admitted that she had gone too far; a concession which once more restored the hopes of Ba.s.sompierre.

Meanwhile he continued to receive constant letters of encouragement, both from Louis XIII and Richelieu, urging him to persevere until he should have succeeded in effecting a perfect reconciliation not only between the King and Queen, but also between the Queen and the Duke of Buckingham; and a.s.suring him of their perfect satisfaction with the measures which he had already adopted. Marie de Medicis was, however, less placable; and much as she deprecated the idea of hostilities with England, she nevertheless openly applauded the resistance of her daughter to what she designated as the tyrannical presumption of Buckingham, and the blind weakness of Charles, who sacrificed the domestic happiness of a young and lovely bride to the arrogant intrigues of an overbearing favourite. The English Duke himself was peculiarly obnoxious to the Queen-mother, who could not forgive his insolent admiration of Anne of Austria, and the ostentatious manner in which he had made the wife of her son a subject of Court scandal; while, at the same time, she deeply resented the fact that Henriette had not even been permitted to retain her confessor, but was compelled to accept one chosen for her by the minister.

While, therefore, Ba.s.sompierre constantly received directions from both the King and the Cardinal to ensure peace at any price, and to prevail upon the young Queen to make the concessions necessary for producing this result, Marie de Medicis as continually wrote to entreat of the Marechal to uphold the interests of the French Princess, and to a.s.sure her of her perfect satisfaction at the spirit which she had evinced; though it is doubtful if, when these messages were entrusted to the royal envoy, they were ever communicated to the excitable Henriette.

Finally, to his great satisfaction, Ba.s.sompierre succeeded in carrying out the wishes of his sovereign; and he at length took his leave of the English Court, laden with rich presents, after having received the warm acknowledgments of all parties for the patience and impartiality with which he had acted throughout; and the gratification of feeling that a better, and as he hoped a lasting, understanding existed between the royal pair. The household of Henriette had been re-organized, and although upon a more reduced scale than that by which she had been accompanied from France, it was still sufficiently numerous to satisfy even the exigencies of royalty; and thus, estimated by its consequences, this emba.s.sy was probably the most brilliant event of Ba.s.sompierre's whole career; as from the period of his residence at the Court of England, the young Queen possessed both the heart and the confidence of her royal husband, whose affection for his beautiful and accomplished consort thenceforward endured to the last day of his existence.[101]

In the month of November France lost another of her marshals in the person of M. de Lesdiguieres, who had pa.s.sed his eightieth year; while the subsequently celebrated court _roue_, the Duc de Saint-Simon, became the accredited favourite of the changeful and capricious Louis, without, however, attaining any influence in the government, which had at this period become entirely concentrated in the hands of Richelieu and the Queen-mother.

The pregnancy of the d.u.c.h.esse d'Orleans, which was formally announced at the close of this year, was a source of great exultation to her husband, who received with undisguised delight the congratulations which were poured out upon him from every side; nor did he seek to disguise his conviction that, should the Queen continue childless, there was nothing to which he might see fit to aspire, which, with the a.s.sistance of the Guises and their faction, he would find it impossible to attain.

A general hatred of Richelieu was the ruling sentiment of the great n.o.bles, who were anxious to effect his overthrow, but the Cardinal was too prudent to be taken at a disadvantage; and he at once felt that in addition to the blow which he had aimed at the power of the barons by depriving them of their fortified places, he still possessed the means of maintaining his position, and even of increasing his authority, by labouring to accomplish the destruction of the Protestants; a policy which was eagerly adopted by Louis, whose morbid superst.i.tion, coupled with his love of war for its own sake, led him to believe that the work of slaughter which must necessarily supervene could not but prove agreeable to Heaven; counselled as it was, moreover, by a dignitary of the Church.

While Richelieu was thus seeking to involve the nation in a renewal of that intestine warfare by which it had already been so fearfully visited, simply to further his own ambitious views, the princes and n.o.bles whom he had irritated into a thirst for vengeance were no less eager to attain the same object in order to effect his ruin; and for this purpose they endeavoured to secure the co-operation of Gaston, deluding themselves with the belief that the heir-apparent to the throne, who had encouraged their disaffection, and for the maintenance of whose interests Ornano and Chalais had already suffered, would not refuse to them at so critical a moment the support of his name, his wealth, and his influence. But these sanguine malcontents had not yet learned to appreciate the egotistical and ungrateful nature of the young Prince, who kept no mental record of services conferred, and retained no feeling of compunction for sufferings endured in his cause; but who ever sought to avail himself of both, while he continued utterly unable to appreciate either.

The appeal was consequently made in vain. Enriched by the careful policy of the Cardinal, Gaston sought only to profit by his suddenly-attained wealth; and despite the entreaties of his wife, whose youth, beauty, and accomplishments might well, for a time at least, have commanded his respect, he plunged into the most puerile and degrading pleasures, and abandoned himself to a life of alternate indolence and dissipation. The immense fortune of the d.u.c.h.ess, which had moreover been greatly increased by the acc.u.mulated interest of a long minority, was wasted in the most shameful orgies, amid dissolute and unseemly a.s.sociates; and even while he was awaiting with undisguised anxiety the birth of a son who, as he fondly trusted, would one day fill the throne of France, no sentiment of forbearance towards the expectant mother could induce him to sacrifice his own selfish pa.s.sions.[102]