Henrietta Maria Part 22

[Footnote 387: _Mercurius Pragmaticus_, October 12-20, 1647. This newspaper (a feature of which was four topical verses prefixed to each number) was written by Nedham, a journalist who had formerly written the parliamentary newspaper _Mercurius Britannicus_, and who afterwards returned to the Roundheads. He was pardoned after the Restoration. In 1661 he collected and published the verses of _Mercurius Pragmaticus_ under the t.i.tle of _A Short History of the English Rebellion_.]

[Footnote 388: "If the King ... take the covenant, G.o.d will never prosper him nor the world value him."--_Nicholas Papers_, I, 165.]

[Footnote 389: _Nicholas Papers_, I, p. 298.]

[Footnote 390: In 1651 she dismissed her servants "that will not turn papists, or cannot live of themselves without wages."--_Nicholas Papers_, I, p. 237.]

[Footnote 391: Henrietta was so much attached to him that she went to see him in his sickness at the Oratorians' House in the Rue S. Honore. See _Histoire des troubles de la Grande Bretagne_, by Robert Monteith (Salmonet), 1659.]

[Footnote 392: Walter Montagu became Henrietta's Grand Almoner about this time; probably he succeeded Du Perron.]

[Footnote 393: The Church of England party was extremely annoyed at the publication of a book ent.i.tled _La Chaine du Hercule Gaulois_, in which it was a.s.serted that Charles I died a Catholic. Add. MS., 12,186.]

[Footnote 394: _Lettres de Henriette Marie a sa soeur Christine_, p. 104.]

[Footnote 395: The letter of the d.u.c.h.ess is among the Roman Transcripts P.R.O.]

[Footnote 396: _An exact narrative of the attempts made upon the Duke of Gloucester_ (1654), p. 15.]

[Footnote 397: _An exact narrative of the attempts made upon the Duke of Gloucester_ (1654), p. 13.]

[Footnote 398: Lord Hatton. _Nicholas Papers_, II, p. 143.]

[Footnote 399: Dante: _Paradiso_, XVII.]

[Footnote 400: Green: _Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria_, p. 388. Madame de Motteville: _Memoires_ (1783), V, p. 276.]

[Footnote 401: Lovel: _La Muse Historique_ (1857), t. I, p. 174.]

CHAPTER XI

THE FOUNDRESS OF CHAILLOT

No cruell guard of diligent cares, that keep Crown'd woes awake; as things too wise for sleep.

But reverent discipline, and religious fear, And soft obedience, find sweet biding here; Silence, and sacred rest; peace and pure joyes; Kind loves keep house, ly close, make no noise, And room enough for Monarchs, where none swells Beyond the kingdomes of contentfull Cells.

R. CRASHAW (out of Barclay)

There is a portion of Henrietta's life which stands apart from its general current, which seems, indeed, rather an acted commentary on her career than an integral portion of it: when she retires from the schemes, the pa.s.sions, the loves, and the hates of the world, and, laying aside the trappings of her rank, appears as a humble and sorrowful woman, striving to read, by the light of prayer and meditation, the lesson of her stormy days. The Queen of England is gone, and in her stead is seen the foundress of Chaillot.

The temper which produced this fruit must long have been growing up, but it became active and apparent when the great blow of her life came upon her.

While she was a wife, even a wife separated by evil fortune from her husband, she continued to live, as far as her straitened means permitted, in a manner suitable to her rank, and she did not refuse to take part in the splendid amus.e.m.e.nts of Paris, which were congenial to her gay disposition. She was seen at lotteries and dances; she accepted the feasts and dinners which the French royal family offered in her honour. Her attendance was as brilliant as her fallen fortunes would allow of, and her faded beauty was set off to the best advantage by the beautiful dress which was then worn by ladies of rank.

But with the death of Charles all this was changed. She ceased to accept invitations, and she rarely went abroad into the streets of Paris, except to visit some religious house. In her own house the strictest simplicity was used. Most of the maids of honour were dismissed, and the Queen exchanged her silks and jewels for a mourning robe, which she wore to the end of her life.

Her love of dress had been as great as might have been expected of a woman of her beauty, her rank, and, above all, her nationality. Once in her early married life she expressed great pleasure in a magnificent gown studded with jewels which she was wearing. Her confessor, the stern Berulle, who was present, reproved her somewhat sharply for her vanity and frivolity.

"Ah, mon pere, do not be angry with me," pleaded the young Queen, half laughing and half penitent. "I am young now, but when I am forty I will change all this, and become quite good and serious." Her light words were prophetic, for she was in her fortieth year when she became a widow.

Contemporary prints show of what fashion was her widow's dress. It was of some black stuff made quite plainly, except that the bodice was shaped to a point in front, and it was almost high at the neck; the only relief was a white linen collar, falling down over the shoulders, and matching the cuffs, which turned back over the wide sleeves. From the head fell a long, heavy black veil.

This sorrowful garb was the outward expression of a grief which, like most deep grief, craved the consolation of quiet and retirement. And where, in the Paris of that day, could quiet be found, except within the protecting walls of a religious house?

Henrietta, since her return to Paris in 1644, had frequented the Carmelite convent which her childhood loved, and in her first sorrow she would gladly have forsaken the world altogether, and remained there among the nuns;[402]

but her duties were incompatible with this step. Her young sons required her help to restore their shattered fortunes, and, above all, her youngest daughter needed a mother's care; after her husband's death her worldly occupations increased rather than diminished, and it was these occupations which cost her the loss of her calm retreat among the Carmelite nuns.

The daughters of S. Teresa are vowed to an austere separation from all things worldly, and their rule could not brook the constant coming and going, the noise and the disturbance which waited upon a Queen who was also a politician. They were obliged to request the Queen of England to forgo her visits, and she, however sorrowfully, recognized the justice of their desire and withdrew, to seek another retirement more suited to the conditions of her case.

A hasty glance at a map of seventeenth-century Paris will show the great number of religious houses which then existed, and it might be surmised that to make a choice among them would be no easy matter; but Henrietta's circ.u.mstances were peculiar, and she had little difficulty in selecting the one most fitted to them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HENRIETTA MARIA

FROM AN ENGRAVING]

Some forty years earlier the wise and gentle spirit of S. Francis de Sales had conceived the idea of a religious foundation in which women, delicately nurtured and well educated, might live in greater freedom of spirit and less austerity of body than in the older Orders. He was fortunate enough to find a woman[403] capable of translating his ideas into fact, and the Order of the Visitation flourished exceedingly, and by the middle of the seventeenth century had spread all over France.

Paris was naturally one of the first places to which the new Order came.

The community, which boasted that it had once been ruled over by Mother Chantal herself, after some wanderings finally settled down in the Rue S.

Antoine, within a stone's-throw of the grim fortress of the Bastille.

Though the tide of fashion had set definitely westward since the final abandonment of the Place Royal by Louis XIII, the position was still a good one. Next door was the fine Hotel de Mayence, which still stands as a witness of departed glories, but of the convent nothing remains except the church, which, though but small, was considered in the seventeenth century "one of the neatest in all Paris."[404] Madame de Motteville was the means of introducing this convent to Henrietta's notice. Her own young sister, to whom she was tenderly attached, had lately entered the house as a novice, greatly against her wishes; but in her visits to the girl she had been so won by the piety and kindness of the nuns that she begged the Queen of England to make their acquaintance.

Henrietta was not without solicitation to go elsewhere. "Messieurs de Port Royal," those remarkable men whose doings were causing such a stir in the religious world of France, were anxious that she should come to Port Royal, thinking perhaps to strengthen their position by so direct a connection with royalty. They offered her apartments, and, what must have been more tempting, some much-needed money. But the invitation was not accepted, though the reasons for its refusal are unknown. They may, however, be conjectured, for it is difficult to imagine Henrietta, the true daughter of Henry IV, in the repressive atmosphere of Jansenism, and it may be surmised that had she entered Port Royal she would not have remained there long.

The Rue S. Antoine was more attractive.[405] Henrietta retained a childish and pleasing memory of S. Francis himself, who, at the marriage of Christine of France, had come up to the little Princess, then aged about ten, and, according to his wont, "blending piety and politeness," had a.s.sured her that one day she should receive even greater honours than those now offered to her sister, honours which perhaps his experienced eye could see from her expression she was envying with all her childish heart. She recalled his words when she became Queen of England, and later still she read into them a deeper meaning when she felt herself to be the recipient of the honours of unusual suffering. But this link with the remote past was probably of less interest to her than the presence in the convent of a lady, destined to become her dearest personal friend, whose romantic story must be told if one of the strongest influences on Henrietta's later years is to be appreciated.

Louise de la Fayette was the daughter of one of the n.o.blest houses of Auvergne, and she bore a name which was to be renowned in the history of France. She had a childish taste for the cloister, but when she was about fourteen years of age, her uncle, who was then Bishop of Limoges, presented her to Queen Anne, who received her as one of her maids of honour.

Louise was a beautiful girl, and she possessed besides many charms and accomplishments, of which a sweet singing voice was not the least. She quickly made her mark at Court; but, if her biographers are to be believed, she retained her simple, pious spirit, and preferred remaining quietly in her room to direct attendance upon her royal mistress, whose jealousy, indeed, was soon aroused by the unusual interest shown in the girl by her husband.

The relations between Louis XIII and his wife were, as is well known, most unsatisfactory; but at the same time the King was a man of slow pa.s.sions and of a certain dull virtue. He liked the society of pretty women, but while he loaded his favourites with honours and confidences, which must have cut Anne's proud spirit to the quick, he was usually strictly Platonic in his intercourse with them. To this position he elected Louise de la Fayette. She danced for him, sang for him, talked to him, and every day seemed to increase the spell which her vivacity cast over his slow spirit.

But other eyes were watching her. In the French Court of that time all depended upon the frown or smile of Richelieu, who himself was ever on the watch to gain valuable allies. He marked Louise de la Fayette, and determined to enlist her in his army of spies.

But in this case the Cardinal had reckoned without his host. Louise was only a young girl, but she had a spirit capable even of resisting Richelieu. "She had more courage than all the men of the Court,"[406] wrote Madame de Motteville. She refused to pa.s.s on the secrets of the King, or to play in any way into the hands of his minister, whose jealous anger was aroused and who determined to part her from her royal friend.

It is not surprising that in these circ.u.mstances the girl's mind should have reverted to her old wishes for a conventual life, but there was another reason, which, long after, in the safe retreat of Chaillot, she confessed to her friend Madame de Motteville. Louis was a virtuous man, but he was an unloved and unloving husband, and she was young and beautiful.

There were signs that the Platonic friendship was ripening into something stronger and warmer. Louise became alarmed. That which to many women was an honour, to her pure and upright soul was disgrace unspeakable, and she determined to fly to the only refuge which the times and the circ.u.mstances permitted her, and to bury her sorrows and her temptations within the walls of the cloister.

It was hard to persuade the King to part with her, but she had a powerful ally. Richelieu sent for the royal confessor, Father Caussin, the Jesuit, and in the bland tones which he knew so well how to use, he gravely discussed with him the moral dangers of such a friendship as that which existed between Louis and his wife's maid of honour. Not, he hastened to add, that he believed that any harm was done, but such things were always dangerous. The Cardinal thought that he was exactly adapting his remarks to his audience; but Caussin, who hated and distrusted him, was too acute to be taken in, and had events gone no farther Louise de la Fayette might have remained in the world for Father Caussin. But the girl herself, who had better reason than any one to know the truth of Richelieu's words, and whose own heart was beginning to betray her, sought the Jesuit's advice. At first he was a little rough with her. He did not believe that a girl of seventeen, luxuriously brought up and petted like "a bird of the Indies,"

could really desire to embrace the austerities and abnegations of a conventual life. He hinted that she was piqued by the refusal of the King to grant her some request, or that her self-love had been wounded in one of the little contretemps of Court life. Louise answered gently and quietly.

Nothing had occurred to distress or alarm her in any way. The King's kindness was unchanged, and so great that at any time he would enable her to make a splendid marriage; but she had only one desire, and that was to leave the world. Caussin then pointed out to her the hardness of the cloister for a girl brought up as she had been, but her answer again was ready. She was not thinking of a stern Order, for which she knew her health to be unequal; she wished to enter among the Visitandines, or Filles de Sainte Marie, as they were more commonly called, whose rule was expressly framed for gently nurtured and delicate women. The only regret she would carry away with her, she added, with an irresistible touch of human nature, was the knowledge that her retirement from the Court would give pleasure to Cardinal Richelieu.

By these arguments Caussin was won over, but the King still had to be reckoned with. Louis, however, was superst.i.tiously religious, and pressed at the same time by his confessor, by the Cardinal, and by Louise, he was unable to resist. The day of departure arrived; the girl went off gay and smiling, though her heart was sinking, so that when she thought no one was looking she crept aside to catch a last glimpse of the man she loved; but many of the bystanders were in tears, and even Queen Anne was grave and sympathetic. As for the King, his voice was so broken by grief that he could scarcely whisper the words of farewell, and afterwards his misery was so excessive and so prolonged as to give colour to the suspicions that had been abroad. He could not bear to remain in the place which had witnessed his idol's departure, and he fled to Versailles, at that time a small hunting-box, where he remained for some time plunged in the deepest melancholy.[407]

Louise de la Fayette's retirement from the world caused a great sensation in Paris, and the convent in the Rue S. Antoine became a place of fashionable resort, so that Richelieu began to fear that the nun's influence might be as dangerous as that of the maid of honour. He remarked with great unction that he thought it a pity that the religious life should be thus broken in upon; and as the nuns and the young novice were of the same opinion, the number of visitors decreased. But the King could not be refused. He was anxious to see Louise once more before her bright beauty was shrouded by the religious habit; and in this wish he was supported by Caussin, who still hoped to use her as a political ally. One day Louis arrived quite unexpectedly in the Rue S. Antoine and knocked at the door of the convent. He refused to avail himself of an invitation to enter the enclosure, but across the dividing grill he held a long and eager conversation with the young girl, feasting his eyes the while upon the face which there is reason to think he never saw again. Meanwhile, the Mother Superior, with commendable discretion, retired to as great a distance as conventual propriety would permit, and the King's attendants on the other side did the like. Shortly after this visit Louise put on the religious habit, and when the necessary interval had elapsed the irrevocable vows were taken. The King refused to be present at the profession, but a large company of the Court attended the ceremony, including Queen Anne, who witnessed, doubtless with triumph in her heart, the self-immolation of her innocent rival.