It is said that there comes a time when even the worm will turn, and that time had come to the colourless Earl of Shrewsbury--to his cost.
For his wife, having ignored him as long as he was complaisant, promptly put her foot on him, so to speak, and crushed him the moment he dared to protest. This unfortunate man, who had silently endured being made a cuckold by infatuated chivalrous Arrans and Howards, and even by an impudent Killigrew, drew the line at a Duke of Buckingham. He accordingly challenged this latest lover of his wanton wife, and "his Grace," says Hamilton, "as a reparation for his honour, having killed him upon the spot, remained a peaceable possessor of this famous Helen."
This duel, or murder, for it was nothing less, in which the Earl and one of his seconds lost their lives, while the other was dangerously wounded, was particularly infamous from the active part Lady Shrewsbury herself took in it. For, like some "foul traitress lady" of the _Morte d"Arthur_, having accompanied her lover to the field of battle clad as a page, she held his horse during the combat, and when he was victorious embraced him all covered as he was with her husband"s blood.
Unbridled as were the times even Whitehall could not stomach so shameless and outrageous a crime. Catherine of Braganza, on her own initiative, but powerfully supported by an indignant public, endeavoured to bring the Messalina and her paramour to justice. But the Duke of Buckingham was still more powerful at this time than the law, at which both he and Lady Shrewsbury snapped their fingers. As if to flaunt his defiance of all authority in the face of the angry nation, shortly after the death of Lord Shrewsbury--who did not, as Hamilton says, die on the spot, but lingered two months--his Grace actually installed his mistress in his own house. To the poor d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham, who was as saintly as her husband was impious, this was the last straw. "It is impossible for both of us to live under the same roof," she protested, when the Shrewsbury arrived. "So I thought," retorted the Duke, "and therefore I have ordered your carriage to be got ready to carry you back to your father"s."
The public, staggered by the contempt with which this brazen couple treated their laws and opinions, were reduced to the usual futile expedient with which virtue when baffled by vice seeks to console itself. Aware of the fickle characters of these two arch-evildoers, which presupposed their speedy falling-out, the righteously indignant public, agreeing with the Psalmist that the way of the wicked shall be turned upside down, prophetically awaited this _denouement_.
Nevertheless, even this satisfaction was denied the virtuous, for "never before had my Lady Shrewsbury"s constancy been of such long duration; nor had his Grace ever been so solicitous a lover."
When the noise of their murderous outrage had somewhat subsided the Duke was able to a.s.sist his mistress to perpetrate her long-deferred revenge on foolish Harry Killigrew. As the Messalina wished to be present in person when the punishment was inflicted, the ingenuity required to arrange matters to suit her made this fresh crime particularly cold-blooded. The victim, who had no suspicion, after a silence of sixteen months, of the attempt to be made on him, was to a certain extent safe owing to the very irregularities of his life, which made it difficult to know where and when to despatch him conveniently. The bravoes, however, who were employed to watch his movements were at last able to inform the Countess that one night at a certain hour, after having performed some trifling duty to the Duke of York, he would leave St. James"s Palace for a house in Turnham Green. Her ladyship took her measures accordingly. Killigrew, who had fallen asleep in his coach, was suddenly, somewhere on the road, "awoke by the thrust of a sword which pierced his neck and came out at the shoulder. Before he could cry out he was flung from the vehicle and stabbed in three other places by the valets of the Countess, while"--to continue this extract from a despatch of the French Amba.s.sador to the Minister for Foreign Affairs at Versailles--"the lady herself looked on from her own coach and six, and cried out to the a.s.sa.s.sins, "Kill the villain!" Nor did she drive off till he was thought dead."
The darkness, however, favoured him, and it was his unfortunate servant, who was slain in defending his master, that in the hurry and excitement of the fray the Countess took for Killigrew. When she learnt that he had escaped, though badly wounded, and was thinking of demanding redress, far from being alarmed at the consequences to herself, she sent him word that he had better be satisfied with the punishment he had got, for the second time she tried to murder him she should not fail! Killigrew, growing wise by experience, like the majority of us, took the hint, and lived so circ.u.mspectly afterwards that little more was ever heard of him. It is rumoured that he succeeded his father as Court Fool in the reign of William and Mary, and was three times married, once to a peer"s daughter and twice to servant-girls! But he never crossed Lady Shrewsbury"s path again, and the Duke of Buckingham having explained the affair to the satisfaction of the easy-going King, the matter was hushed up.
Some time elapsed after these adventures before her ladyship again came prominently before a public to whose opinion she was so indifferent. Not so his Grace. There was scarcely ever a day of his life that he was not feverishly employed in providing the world with news a.s.sociated with his name. When not getting himself thrown into the Tower for offending the King, he was caballing for power at my Lady Castlemaine"s, or denouncing an unpopular Clarendon in the House of Lords; when not championing the people and Protestantism, in neither of which he believed, against despotism and Popery, both of which he despised, this prince of profligates was squandering his enormous wealth on his enormous vices. Quiet he never was. But so still was Lady Shrewsbury during the year or two in which her pa.s.sions slumbered that but for the web of enchantment in which, to the world"s marvel, she was known to hold the fickle, restless Duke, it might have been fancied she was engaged, like a tigress after a feast, in cleansing herself of gore. It may, however, be taken for granted that though withdrawn from view for a time it was neither from shame nor weariness nor, least of all, repentance.
Now and then from her seclusion at Buckingham"s splendid palace of Clieveden on the Thames, afterwards so celebrated by Pope as "the bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love," there came strange rumours. It was whispered that as the Duke had pulled the strings of intrigue at my Lady Castlemaine"s, so Louis XIV."s agents were pulling his Grace at Clieveden by means of his mistress. The series of events which had been slowly working for the realisation of Buckingham"s ambition, and the manoeuvring of which he, even when most volatile, never neglected, had at last culminated in his political triumph. The Cabal ministry had juggled themselves into power, and of that corrupt crew his Grace was easily the leader. Not only the Protestant and virtuous section of England, but the ambitious French King, to both of which factors Buckingham owed his success, looked to him as a chief and a confederate respectively. This brilliant libertine was capable, had he wished, of proving himself a patriot, perhaps of changing the whole course of English history. He had something almost like genius and a great opportunity. But he who had never been true to any principle in his life, or to any person for twenty-four hours together, save Lady Shrewsbury, had neither the desire nor the will to choose between his country and his country"s enemies. With diabolical cynicism, which in Buckingham sometimes resembled a sort of subtle insanity, he determined to be true to both by despising both. It was, perhaps, the difficulty of playing this double game that was its chief attraction for him. But while it was easy to hoodwink Protestant England, whose idol he was, it was not so easy to dupe Louis XIV., whose tool he was. That astute monarch, informed of the influence Lady Shrewsbury had over the unprincipled minister, had tied the great Villiers fast by bribing his mistress. It is true that Buckingham eventually snapped his bonds, but when that happened he was no longer worth the French King"s consideration. The day that the French Amba.s.sador paid the Shrewsbury her first ten thousand livres he had the satisfaction of writing to his master that she had sworn, "Buckingham should comply with the King in all things." Of course, only the vaguest suspicion of this corruption was felt by the public, but the mere fact that while the Duke openly expressed in Parliament contrition for his past evil ways he still kept Lady Shrewsbury under his roof, was sufficient not only to cause his reformation to be doubted, but to remind England that its Messalina was not yet among the d.a.m.ned.
It was now, when Buckingham was at the zenith of his career, that these two terrible phenomena of the Restoration decided to give the world a crowning proof of their supreme contempt of it. The nation was suddenly staggered by the news that the chief Minister of the State, though his wife was still living, had, without any pretence at secrecy, been married to the Countess of Shrewsbury! As if to emphasise the scandal the bigamous ceremony was performed according to all the rites of the Church by the Duke"s chaplain, Dr. Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester. To the pious when such things could be done with impunity it seemed as if they were living in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. But the impious crew that revelled at Whitehall merely laughed, and jestingly spoke of the lawful d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham as the "Dowager d.u.c.h.ess." The sun of the Restoration had reached the meridian.
Strange to say, historians have pa.s.sed over this foolish and gratuitous infamy with comparative indifference, as if the period and the notorious characters of the bigamous couple made further comment unnecessary. This may be a sufficient explanation for the profane Sprat"s share in the crime, but it was something more than the mere lawless gratification of l.u.s.t that forced Villiers and the Shrewsbury into bigamy. As no reason has ever been given ours can only be a guess.
The agents of Louis XIV. did not often squander his money without a _quid pro quo_, and perhaps it does not exceed probability to suggest that before receiving French bribes Buckingham"s mistress was called upon to show some proof of her influence over him? The same year his Grace went to Paris, ostensibly to represent Charles II. at the funeral of his sister, the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, but in reality to prepare the way for selling his King and country, as he had already sold himself, to France. His reception at Versailles was magnificent, and he returned laden with wealth and dignities. So favourably did he impress the French Court that Louis remarked "he was almost the only English gentleman he had ever seen!"
In the following year the virtuous public, which had indignantly predicted three years before the speedy falling-out of this precious couple, were still further scandalised to learn, in the words of Marvell, that "the Duke of Buckingham exceeds all with Lady Shrewsbury, by whom he believes he had a son, to whom the King stood G.o.dfather." We may further add that this infant, to which the courtesy t.i.tle of Earl of Coventry, borne by the eldest son of the Dukes of Buckingham, had been given, died young and was buried in the family vault at Westminster Abbey!
And now, in such favour was the Duke at Whitehall, the mock d.u.c.h.ess returned to Court and brazenly dared to show herself about the country.
Evelyn relates that at Newmarket "he found the jolly blades racing, dancing, feasting, and revelling, more resembling a luxurious and abandoned rout than a Christian country. The Duke of Buckingham was in mighty favour, and had with him that impudent woman, the Countess of Shrewsbury, and his band of fiddlers." The day of reckoning, however, came at last. Unfortunately, it did not depend on any sudden belated awakening of the moral sense in Charles II., or a revival of virtue in a country prepared to sweep away the indecencies that were outraging it.
Buckingham and Lady Shrewsbury were only brought to book when his political power was broken. The Restoration went on more deliriously than ever till it reached the fatal climax in 1688. With the Duke"s fall the enchantment of the Shrewsbury was snapped. Called before the bar of the House of Lords, with no d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland or King to stay the arm of the law now in his behalf, he was ordered to separate altogether from this woman, and each of them was required "to enter into security to the King"s Majesty in the sum of ten thousand pounds apiece for this purpose."
It may be doubted whether the scathing indictment he received from his peers made any impression on him. But his day was over and, though he tried to recover the license he had so shamefully abused and the confidence of the nation he had so infamously betrayed, his star steadily continued to set. His future career was one of baffled hopes and pleasures, of ever deepening disgrace, humiliation, and even poverty. He lost everything of the wonderful store of gifts that Fortune had so bounteously bestowed on him--all, save his brilliant wit, which in a world of wits acknowledged none superior. But even wit deserted him at the end, and he died miserably enough. We have already, on an earlier page, expressed our opinion of this remarkable libertine who occupies such a prominent place in his times, and in mentioning him now for the last we can find no more fitting words in which to dismiss him than Pope"s familiar lines. As the _oraison funebre_ of the great Buckingham they will be quoted as long as the phenomenal age in which he flourished is remembered:--
"In the worst inn"s worst room, with mat half hung, The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung, On once a flock-bed, but repair"d with straw, With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw; The George and Garter dangling from that bed, Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies--alas! how chang"d from him, That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!
Gallant and gay, in Clieveden"s proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love; Or, just as gay, at council, in a ring Of mimic"d statesmen, and their merry king.
No wit, to flatter, left of all his store!
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends."
As for Lady Shrewsbury, she was not only compelled to separate from her lover and provide a surety of ten thousand pounds to that effect, but obliged to leave the country. There were thousands of honest people who would, no doubt, have liked to see her burnt or hanged, as would probably have been her fate had she been a woman of the people. But Lady Shrewsbury was a peeress and the widow of a Talbot, and criminal rank in those days was banished not executed. She had not committed the aristocratic crime of high treason, for which alone rank could suffer death. There was, however, a very irksome durance to which offenders of her s.e.x and station were subjected, and in banishing her to Dunkirk Charles obliged her to retire to a convent. How long she remained there, or what intrigues finally freed her from what to such a woman must have been a rigorous imprisonment, history does not relate. As far as the public were concerned she had ceased to exist.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DUKE OF SHREWSBURY.]
Lady Shrewsbury was, however, very much alive, and having spun her web round the younger son of a Somerset baronet, she married him, and under the name of Mrs. Bridges played a secret and dangerous game in the coming years. For her pa.s.sions having burnt themselves out, from their ashes sprang a fresh l.u.s.t--the l.u.s.t of political intrigue. Its victim was her eldest son, the new Earl of Shrewsbury. A boy when his father was slain, he had resented the ignominy of having to live with his mother under Buckingham"s roof; and though the spirit which urged him to appeal to the House of Lords that he and his brother might be removed from the care of such a mother was nipped in the bud, nevertheless it was sufficient to make both children distasteful to Buckingham. They were sent to their maternal grandfather, Lord Cardigan, to whom the young Earl owed his education. At the time his mother married Bridges he was one of the most promising young peers in England. A worthier representative of the proud line from which he sprung it had, perhaps, never had. Gifted with great personal beauty (his mother"s legacy) and a shy, gentle manner, he at once attracted all who met him. The seriousness of his character corresponded with the high hopes he raised.
Born in a profligate and indulgent age, he had, like most young men of spirit, yearned to taste all the pleasures of the senses. With the blood of such a mother in his veins, to resist desire was impossible. He tasted the cup of vice. It intoxicated him, and in that moment of delirious pleasure it seemed to him, as to many another youth before and since, that to be the slave of l.u.s.t was a fate more enviable than that of the conqueror of the world. The reputation of being a "king of hearts," a t.i.tle satirically applied to him at this period, he never quite lost. But this young Talbot was not one of your commonplace striplings who sway like reeds before the wind. He had a thoughtful, intelligent mind and a great ambition. Already, by "a very critical and anxious inquiry into matters of controversy," a.s.sisted by the celebrated Tillotson, the young n.o.bleman, a Roman Catholic by birth, heredity, and education, had publicly professed his adherence to the Anglican faith. A youth who could of his own initiative reason himself into taking such a step was not to be long entangled by vice. The world was to be won, and he meant to win it; he would be the greatest of all the Talbots, the champion of liberty, the hope of Protestant England. It was a n.o.ble ambition, and the times were favourable.
But from the very start two influences stronger than he pulled him back at every step he took. One of these was his temperament. The conduct of his mother, the death of his father, and that of a dearly loved only brother--who within five days of his twenty-first birthday was killed in a duel by one of the d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland"s b.a.s.t.a.r.ds--had combined to deepen the morbid tendencies of a naturally hyper-sensitive nature. To the influence of these terrible family tragedies was added that of a perpetual and vain struggle to subdue the l.u.s.t he had inherited. He lived, as it were, under the shadow of some fatal curse which seemed to predestine all his actions to failure. Knowing full well the value of self-confidence, he doubted himself constantly, and, like a man from the brink of a precipice, was ever recoiling from great crises which he had enthusiastically helped to create. With all the _wish_ in the world, he had not the _will_ to be brave. And life demanded bravery, spirit, initiative from him at every turn.
The other influence fatal to his career was his mother. He could never rid himself from the fear in which he stood of her. To the Countess of Shrewsbury, become now as fierce and vindictive in political intrigue as she had formerly been in her amours, such a son was an a.s.set of the highest value. Married to her second husband, middle-aged, and buried in a remote part of the country, the once notorious Messalina had long ceased to be remembered. But there lived not in England in that day of plots and counterplots a more inveterate conspirator. In the obscurity of her retired life she was steeped to the throat in intrigue. Long before the Revolution she was a spy and pensioner of the French King, and with the fall of the Stuarts, under whom she had fared so safely, she became, as was natural, a rabid Jacobite. The young Earl, her son, long separated from her, was developing on quite opposite lines. In the endeavour to realise his ideals, the year before the Revolution he showed his disapproval of King James"s policy by resigning all his Court appointments, and in 1688, in behalf of the cause of freedom he had publicly professed, joined the party that deprived the stubborn, stupid Stuart of his throne. It was natural, as Miss Strickland says, that this young man "might be considered (when all his advantages were computed) the mightiest power among the aristocracy of Great Britain." William of Orange, like all great statesmen, was quick to recognise talent; he readily offered high office to this young Earl of Shrewsbury who had helped to make him King of England, and on whom such high popular hopes were built. It may be said that a young career never bloomed under a more vivifying sun.
But now his mother, who lived remote from him and had never come into his life but to bring doom with her, like the terrible, mysterious queen in Maeterlinck"s _Mort de Tintagiles_, reappeared. What was the exact secret of her hold, what fears she worked on, what hopes she appealed to, cannot be said; but her effect was like the effect of blackmail. The young Earl with the ardent ambition and the n.o.ble ideals yielded--with what anguish the indecision of his whole future career indicates--to the inexplicable influence of his mother. One of the first steps in that life of brilliant promise was one of treachery. The would-be saviour of England secretly trafficked with the Court of St. Germain. Nor was he allowed to stand forth as an open champion of the Stuarts whom he could not love; he was made to remain at Whitehall as William of Orange"s chief and most confidential Minister in order that his mother and the Jacobites might know all that was going on there. That such a man as Shrewsbury could continue to play this double game long was impossible.
His pleas to be allowed to resign the seals of office were pitiable, and his behaviour, when his treachery was finally denounced and King William n.o.bly and secretly gave him the chance to clear himself by a lie which he professed to believe, was painful. The King"s att.i.tude on this occasion gave him a fresh chance; he took it but to betray it and his own better nature. At last his conscience could endure the strain no longer; he left office and the country after a veritable martyrdom of ten years. "Had I a son," he said, "I would sooner bind him a cobbler than a courtier, and a hangman than a statesman."
After the death of his mother, who, if not wilfully, at least heartlessly, contributed quite as much as his own temperament to the ruin of his career, he returned to England in Queen Anne"s reign. But now, though his country, still believing in him, "called" him and he tried to respond, it was too late. He flung all his influence on the side of liberty and Protestantism, but his statecraft was demoralised by his past experiences, and his opportunity, which seldom comes to a man more than once, had been bungled in the previous reign. Like his mother, he too was born out of his fitting age. In the more congenial atmosphere of our day he would have won something more worthy of his great talents than his dukedom and garter. To his lofty ambition such prizes were of small account beside what his soul lost in grandeur.
Of all tragedies those of one"s ideals are the saddest. The lives of statesmen who have failed are always interesting, and as English history is full of such the book that may some day record them will be worth both reading and writing. In such a work, of a surety, the career of the first and only Duke of Shrewsbury, who set out not to win fame and fortune, but to do what he believed right, and miserably failed, will be not the least dramatic. Like Tyrconnel, he was more sinned against than sinning; to be forgotten by posterity as they are is not so dreadful as to have the faint memory of them revived by the fleeting mention of some "Wanton Shrewsbury" or other. To us the marring of her son seems the greatest of this Messalina"s crimes.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "MADAME."
(HENRIETTA, d.u.c.h.eSS OF ORLEANS.)
_From a miniature reproduced by courtesy of Dr. G. C. Williamson._]
"MADAME"--HENRIETTA, d.u.c.h.eSS OF ORLEANS
THE FRENCH COURT--THE EVIL GENIUS OF THE RESTORATION
As she was French in all but her birth, the favourite sister of Charles II. can only be said to belong to the Court of the Restoration by courtesy. Nevertheless, on the occasion of her two short visits to England during her brother"s reign the impression she created was so lasting, so sympathetic, that posterity, like her own generation, has agreed that of all the women who graced Whitehall the most fascinating was Madame.
She was born in the thick of the Civil War at Exeter, whither her mother had fled, and from which soon after her birth the _Reine Malheureuse_ was also obliged to flee, leaving her child to the care of the faithful Lady Dalkeith. On the capitulation of Exeter the royal infant fell into the hands of the Parliament, to which the charge of such a prisoner was extremely embarra.s.sing. It was, however, relieved from its dilemma by Lady Dalkeith, who was a woman of courage and resource. For Cromwell, very rightly looking upon every adherent of the Stuarts as a possible conspirator, decided to dismiss her and confine the tiny princess at St.
James"s, under his own supervision, whereupon Lady Dalkeith promptly fled the country with her charge.
The story of their flight to Dover on foot, clad in the rags of peasants--a disguise to which the little girl had such an objection that she angrily announced to all they met, "that she was not a peasant boy, but the Princess Henrietta of England"--when related at the French Court no doubt excited a suitable thrill. But Parliament was not ridiculous enough to pursue such fugitives, and they crossed to Calais in the ordinary French packet. Such was Madame"s _debut_ on the theatre of life. She was two years old at the time. Fifteen years later she again appeared before the public as a star, so to speak,--a _role_ in which she scored a brilliant popular success. Like most such intervals, these intervening years were obscure, hard, discouraging.
For Queen Henrietta Maria, widowed, exiled, and impoverished to the condition of shabby gentility, was not a cheerful mother to live with.
She was always weeping, praying, and plotting, and her _enfant de benediction_ had a cheerless childhood. Rooms had been a.s.signed to the Queen of England at the Louvre, and the sum of forty thousand livres had been voted her by the Parliament of Paris. But it was soon _mange_ by her son and his beggared followers, and there was often real misery in that little Court at the Louvre.
The famous Cardinal de Retz, who during the Fronde was a sort of king in Paris, describes with his mocking pity the state in which he discovered the English royalties when one day in mid-winter affairs obliged him to call on Henrietta Maria.
"You see," said the _Reine Malheureuse_, whom he found at the bedside of her daughter, who as a child was thought to be consumptive, "I am keeping Henrietta company; I dare not let the poor child rise to-day as we have no fire."
"The truth was," adds de Retz ironically, "that no tradespeople would trust her for anything. Posterity will hardly believe that a princess of England, granddaughter of Henry the Great, had wanted a f.a.ggot in the month of January to get out of bed in the Louvre, and in the eyes of the French Court! We read in history with horror of baseness less monstrous than this, and the little concern I have met with about it in most people"s minds has obliged me to make a thousand times this reflection: _That examples of times past move men beyond comparison more than those of their own times_. _We accustom ourselves to what we see, and I doubt whether Caligula"s horse being made a consul would have surprised us so much as we imagine._"
Owing to the cynical de Retz, it no doubt consoled Henrietta Maria to be a.s.sured that "a princess of England would not keep her bed the next day for want of a f.a.ggot."
But his generosity seems to us to have been prompted from a far less n.o.ble impulse than that of the chivalrous Duke of Ormond. For this Bayard of the British peerage sold his order of the Garter for the benefit of his Queen, and was "compelled to put himself in prison, with other gentlemen, at a pistole a week for his diet."
These days of adversity, however, came to an end, and after the Fronde was subdued Henrietta Maria enjoyed all the privileges of her royal birth. Not that she availed herself of them; on the contrary, grief had taken most of the joy out of life for her, and though she lived in the closest intimacy with her sister-in-law, Anne of Austria, the Regent, and in the midst of a brilliant Court, she was scarcely ever seen out of her own apartments. But grief did not kill Henrietta Maria"s ambition.
She longed to see a crown on her daughter"s head. So the young princess, who shared her mother"s rigid seclusion, was carefully educated with the secret object of making a suitable consort for her cousin, the young King.
In looking back on these dreary years of girlhood Henrietta could remember but a single joy they had contained. It was a joy, however, so great that its memory coloured this entire period. This was the real affection that her brother Charles, alone of mortals, during an all too fleeting visit to Paris, evinced for her. The emotional child, whose affections were being choked by the austerity of her mother"s life, paid back her brother"s kindness to her with compound interest. He began by treating her as a plaything with which he liked to toy in an idle moment and ended by making her his friend and confidante. To her he was like a hero of romance. No one in that graceless, dashing crowd of exiled Cavaliers, whom necessity had turned into adventurers, followed his fortunes with such an eager sympathy. No one in those long years of baffled hopes and fruitless efforts was more firmly convinced that he would come to his own again. When his star had completely vanished in the dazzling sunlight of Cromwell, when even the astute Mazarin believed that the throne of England was for ever lost to the Stuarts, the insignificant Henrietta in her dreary room at the Louvre never despaired. It is perhaps only a girl who could, under such circ.u.mstances, have maintained such an unshaken faith. Charles never forgot it. Cynical and insincere with all, he remained to the last ever frank and true to his sister. She wished no greater reward.
Owing to the simplicity of her life no one in the brilliant French Court remarked the almost imperceptible development of those spiritual charms that were to turn an obscure princess into a fascinating queen of hearts. As a child she was not at all pretty, and all her physical defects were heightened by perpetual colds, and toothaches, and sore eyes. The complete lack of taste with which her mother dressed her, and a certain blue-stocking air that her intellectual cramming gave her were, moreover, little calculated to excite admiration. It was, on the face of it, absurd to imagine that Louis, palpitating with youth and health and pride and the joy of life, would dream of choosing such a princess for his queen. Pride alone would have prevented him from placing on the throne beside him one whom he considered as a poor relation living on his charity. Besides, his boy"s head at the time was full of Mazarin"s nieces; he was kissing Hortense, flirting with Olympe, and plighting undying troth with Marie.
Henrietta Maria, however, had learnt nothing from her prolonged lessons in defeat; she was one of those women who resist, not from obstinacy, but from habit. Having set her heart on seeing her daughter Queen of France she intrigued accordingly. The most important accomplice in the making of the match was Anne of Austria, the King"s mother. The relations between the sisters-in-law were of the most cordial description, and Anne, like an anxious mother terrified lest her favourite son should make a _mesalliance_--an event that in Louis" case seemed quite likely--decided that the sooner he was married the better.
Of course she had a list of marriageable princesses to choose from, but as in her anxiety there was no time to be lost her choice was confined to one of two on the spot. These were "La Grande Mademoiselle" and the Princess Henrietta, both of whom were her nieces; but as no love was lost between Anne and the former, the princess of England who had lacked a f.a.ggot to warm herself by suddenly found herself arrived within measurable distance of the throne of France.