Henrietta Maria

Nevertheless, in spite of opposition, Charles went off to Scotland, and there, to the deep disgust of his Anglican friends, who had to learn that he was a very different man from his father, he was persuaded to take the Covenant, a step which they believed would not only alienate his best friends, but prejudice his chances with Providence.[388] Even the Queen was annoyed, unless, as her opponents hinted, she feigned her chagrin. But annoyance soon gave place to anxiety. First came the news of the defeat of Dunbar, then of the "crowning mercy" of Worcester; at last, after weeks of suspense, Henrietta was able to welcome her son once more, safe indeed, but worn out by almost incredible adventures and escapes, and cured for life by his sojourn among them of any liking for the Presbyterians. It was no wonder that the lad was depressed and irritable and unwilling to talk to his mother or any one else, though she had still considerable influence over him, so that it was complained that the King's secret council were his mother, "Lord Jermyn, and Watt. Montagu, for that of greatest business he consults with them only, without the knowledge of Marquis of Ormonde or Sir Ed. Hyde."[389] She was able to persuade him (the more easily, no doubt, from his Scotch experiences) to refrain from attending the Huguenot worship at Charenton, which she thought might compromise him with his relatives of France.

And, indeed, under the pressure of her many misfortunes, Henrietta was becoming more of a bigot than she had ever been before.[390] In 1647 Father Philip died.[391] The loss of this worthy old man, who was well aware of the caution necessary to a Catholic queen living among heretics, exposed her to the influence of other and less judicious counsellors, specially after the death of her Grand Almoner,[392] which deprived her of another moderating influence. When in 1650 the Anglican service, which had been held at the Louvre since the first days of the exile, was suppressed, Protestant gossip pointed out Walter Montagu as the author of this deed; but that gentleman would reply nothing, even to so weighty an interrogator as Sir Edward Hyde, except that the Queen of France was at liberty to give what orders she pleased in her own house. Henrietta may have regretted this sudden outburst of zeal on the part of her sister-in-law, but she found no answer to make when that lady came to visit her and told her, with the solemnity of a Spaniard and a dévote, that she thought the recent troubles of her son the King of France must have been due to his mother's weak toleration of heretical worship at the Louvre. History does not record whether she changed her mind when this act of reparation was not followed by an abatement of the rebellion; but henceforth the Anglican service was held nowhere but in the chapel of Sir Richard Browne, the father-in-law of John Evelyn, whose house was protected by his position as resident of the King of England. There John Cosin, the exiled Dean of Durham, who still kept up his impartial warfare against Rome on the one side and Geneva on the other, struck heavy blows in the cause of the Church of England, not, it was reported, without success. Religious feeling ran as high as ever it had years before in London,[393] and the good Dean's controversial acerbity was not sweetened when his only son went over to the enemy, by the instrumentality, it was said, of Walter Montagu. Nor did the alert Abbé's victories end there. Thomas Hobbes was still living among his learned friends in the French capital. His religion, or lack of it, made him suspect to Catholics and Protestants alike, and the Anglicans were considerably chagrined when they heard that this dangerous person, on the recommendation of Montagu, had been removed from the English Court, where the young King had shown an unfortunate liking for his company. They would fain have had the credit themselves of this judicious act, though perhaps in later days, when they saw the "father of atheists" a welcome guest at Whitehall, some of them may have been glad to be able to say that they had had nothing to do with the odious persecution which he had suffered from the bigots in Paris.

Three years after the suppression of the Anglican service at the Louvre, other events occurred which did not tend to Henrietta's popularity with some of her son's best friends. Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of Charles I, is now chiefly remembered as an actor in that most pathetic of all farewell scenes, when he and his sister Elizabeth took leave of their dying father. The little girl never recovered the shock of her father's death, and died without seeing again the mother who longed for her. Henry was too young to suffer thus, and at one time a rumour was about which reached the ears of Sir Edward Nicholas that Cromwell intended to make the child king; but in 1653 the authorities in England, touched by compassion for his youth, or perhaps finding him more trouble than he was worth, sent him over to his sister in Holland, whence, much against that lady's will, he was fetched to Paris to his mother's side. Henrietta was charmed with the little fellow, whom she had not seen since he was quite a child. Though small and thin he was "beautiful as a little angel" and, while resembling his aunt Christine in face, possessed the fascinating manners of his father's family and was remarkably forward in book-learning. The boy was made much of, not only by his mother, but by the whole French Court. "You know they always like anything new,"[394] wrote the Queen of England to her sister, and she goes on to relate with some amusement the innumerable visits she received on account of this petit chevalier. She was, no doubt, glad that he had made so good an impression upon his French relatives, for she had schemes for his advancement which depended largely on their favour.

The only one of her children whom Henrietta had been able to bring up in her own faith was the dearest of all, the youngest little daughter, whom she was wont to call her child of benediction. It is probable that during her husband's lifetime she felt a scruple in trying to turn his children from the religion which their father professed, particularly as he showed a generous confidence in her in the matter; but now that he was gone she felt her obligation to be over, and she gave much time and attention to influencing the minds of her two elder sons, of whom she had good hopes. She even, unmindful of the lessons of the past, entered anew into negotiations with the Pope and, by means of the Duchess of Aiguillon, a niece of Richelieu, held out, in the name of her son, hopes of untold benefits to the Catholics of the British Isles if the Holy Father would only assist the young and importunate monarch, who would certainly repay his paternal kindness with interest.[395] But, nevertheless, the Queen knew well enough the grave difficulties in the way of Charles' profession of the Catholic faith, and she turned with relief to the little Henry in whose youth she saw an easy prey. She had other arguments than those of religion to bring forward. All sensible people, she told the boy, were now agreed that the King, his brother, would not regain his throne. He knew the extreme poverty to which the revolution had reduced his family; how as a Protestant did he propose to live in a manner suitable to his rank as a Prince of England? Whereas, if he would become a Catholic and take orders, his aunt, the Queen of France, would make everything easy by procuring for him a cardinal's hat, and by bestowing upon him such rich benefices as would afford him a fitting provision.

Henry was a boy, little more than a child, but the circumstances of his life had been such as early to teach him the necessity of self-interest. His father's last counsels, given at a supreme moment, may have weighed with him, for his well-known answer, "I will be torn to pieces ere they make me a king while my brothers live," prove him to have been, at that time, an unusually precocious child. Be this as it may, he showed an unexpected reluctance to follow his mother's advice and an unaccountable dislike of the Abbé Montagu, whom she appointed to be his governor. Perhaps he remembered his father's distrust of that fascinating person; certainly he knew that by following his teaching he would offend irrevocably the brother on whom, in case of a restoration to their native land, his future must depend. Henrietta herself was not blind to this aspect of the case, and she tried to propitiate her eldest son, to whom she had given a promise that she would not tamper with his brother's religion. "Henry has too many acquaintances among the idle little boys of Paris," she wrote to Charles, who was away from the city, "so I am sending him to Pontoise with the Abbé Montagu, where he will have more quiet to mind his book."

To Pontoise accordingly Henry went, where Montagu attempted in vain to win his confidence. After a while the boy was allowed to return to Paris, but he showed himself so obstinately indocile that at night-time he and his page (a lad who had been in the service of the Earl of Manchester, and who doubtless enjoyed thwarting the renegade Abbé), "like Penelope's web ... unspun" (as well as they two little young things, some few years above thirty between them) whatever had passed in public.[396] The poor little Prince owned, indeed, that he was called upon to deal with matters above his years. His relatives at the French Court assured him that his first duty was to his mother now that his father was dead. His Anglican friends told him that a sovereign came before a mother, and that his obedience was due to his eldest brother. That brother, moreover, took this view strongly and wrote to him, saying in brief and pithy terms that, should he become a Catholic, he would never see him again. It is not surprising that between all these conflicting opinions Henry's young head was a little confused. He was further perplexed when to other arguments in his mother's favour was added the curious one that his conversion would make amends to her for the breach of her marriage contract, by which she should have had control of her children up to the age of twelve.

Henrietta was, indeed, steeling her heart to greater sternness than she had ever used to any of her children, to whom she had always shown herself an indulgent mother. It may be that, as men said, she was under the influence of Montagu, who, however, was not wont to be very severe, and who did his best to win over his pupil by kindness and by pointing out to him the worldly advantages which a change of faith would bring—a lesson which the luxuries of Pontoise, contrasting as they did with the poverty in which many of Henry's Anglican friends were obliged to live, illustrated in a practical manner. It may be that the Queen thought that a boy of her son's age could not resist severity, and that she was determined to hold out until she conquered the child for what she believed to be his good in this world and the next; but she was to be defeated. While reports were being industriously circulated through the city that Henry was on the point of coming to a better mind, while in some churches thanksgivings were even being offered for his conversion, his continued obstinacy was in reality wearing out his mother's patience. She sent for her son, and after receiving him with her usual affection she said that she required him to hear the Abbé Montagu once again, and that then he must give her his final answer. Montagu pleaded for an hour, expending upon this lad of fourteen all those powers of persuasion and eloquence which enabled him to excel as a popular preacher. But Henry's mind was made up, he was determined to cast in his lot with his brother and England rather than with his mother and France. He communicated his decision to the Queen, and at the fatal words she turned away, saying that she wished to see his face no more. She left the room without any sign of relenting, and her son discovered a little later that her anger even cast his horses out of her stable. He was sobered by the depth of her displeasure, but he reserved his chief wrath for Montagu, to whom he attributed a harshness very far indeed from his mother's natural character. Turning on his late tutor, he upbraided him angrily: "Such as it is I may thank you for it, sir; and 'tis but reason what my mother sayes to me I say to you: I pray be sure I see you no more."[397] Then, turning on his heel, he showed his independence by marching on to the English chapel at Sir Richard Browne's house (for it was a Sunday morning), where he was received with such rejoicings as befitted so signal a triumph over the rival religion. He could not, of course, return to the Palais Royal, and he asked the hospitality of Lord Hatton, who, both as Royalist and Anglican, was delighted to welcome his "little great guest." His satisfaction was the greater because of the piquant circumstance that he was himself a relative by marriage of the discomfited Abbé. Henry, who was considered to have "most heroically runne through this great worke beyond his yeres,"[398] made further proof of his unflinching Protestantism by receiving a distinguished minister of Charenton, to whom he gravely discoursed of his father's religious views. But he did not remain long in Paris. Lord Ormonde arrived with letters and messages from the King of England and bore the lad off to Cologne, where his eldest brother was at that time keeping his Court.

*       *       *       *       *

The years of the exile wore on not too cheerfully. Little by little Henrietta lost the influence she had had over her eldest son, who came to distrust Jermyn, perhaps because he saw the favourite rich and prosperous, while others of his faithful servants were almost in need. Probably the Queen was annoyed at the ill success of Charles in her own country, for it is remarkable that the young man who possessed the French temperament, and who was, in many respects, like his grandfather Henry IV, was never popular in Paris, while James was greatly liked and admired. It is true that the latter was a singularly gallant youth, and that he spoke the French language much better than his brother, which accomplishment was in itself enough to win Parisian hearts. "There is nothing, in my opinion, that disfigures a person so much as not being able to speak," said that true Frenchwoman Mademoiselle de Montpensier. As for Princess Henrietta, she was looked upon quite as a French girl, and she was admired, not only for her beauty, but for her exquisite dancing, a talent which she inherited from her mother. It was on account of this beloved child that the widowed Queen of England, in the last years of the exile, came out again a little into the world and held receptions at the Palais Royal, which proved so fascinating as to be serious rivals to those of the grave Spanish Queen of France. At them she was always pleased to welcome Englishmen, for she loved the land of her happy married life in spite of the treatment she had received there. "The English were led away by fanatics," she was wont to say; "the real genius of the nation is very different." So jealous was she of the good name of her son's subjects in critical Paris that once when an English gentleman came to her Court in a smart dress, tied up with red and yellow ribbons, she begged the friend who had introduced him to advise him "to mend his fancy," lest he should be ridiculed by the French.

But ere this another blow had fallen upon Henrietta, and this time she was wounded, indeed, in the house of her friends. As early as 1652 France recognized the Government of the Commonwealth, but in 1657 the Queen learned that her nephew, acting under the advice of Cardinal Mazarin, who was impelled by his usual dread of Spain, had even made a treaty with Cromwell, "ce scélérat," as she was accustomed to call him. By the terms of this treaty her three sons were banished from France, and she herself was only permitted to remain with her young daughter because public opinion would not have tolerated the expulsion of a daughter of Henry IV. The Princes went off to Bruges, where Charles fixed his Court, and to mark their displeasure they took service under the Spaniard. Henrietta had to bear the insults as best she could. She had nowhere to go; for when a year earlier she had thought of a journey to Spain, it had been intimated to her that his Catholic Majesty would prefer her to remain on the French side of the Pyrenees.

The only satisfactory aspect of the matter was that now the Queen felt it possible to press for the payment of her dowry. Her relatives of France, particularly Queen Anne, were liberal, but Henrietta was made to feel now and then

and, besides, hers was too proud a nature to relish dependence. She knew that any scheme likely to spare the coffers of France would be grateful to Mazarin, whose immense riches, splendid palace, and magnificent collection of pictures and curios, the fruit of an unbounded avarice, were the talk of Paris. The request was proffered. The reply came, and Mazarin carried it himself to the Queen. Speaking with the Italian accent, which his long years of residence in France had not been able to eradicate, he explained to her that the Protector refused to give her that for which she asked, because, as he alleged, she had never been recognized as Queen of England. The refusal was bad enough, but the gross insult with which it was accompanied could not fail to cut Henrietta to the heart, but she did not love Mazarin and she had too much spirit to betray her chagrin. "This outrage does not reflect on me," she said proudly, "but on the King, my nephew, who ought not to permit a daughter of France to be treated de concubine. I was abundantly satisfied with the late King, my lord, and with all England; these affronts are more shameful to France than to me."

This episode did not decrease Henrietta's hatred for Cromwell. It was even said by one of her women, who played the part of spy, that she was overheard plotting his murder with Lord Jermyn. But she had not long to endure his usurpation of the seat of her husband, whose regal title she believed him to have refused solely from fear of the army. On September 3rd, 1658, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester, Oliver Cromwell died amid a tumult of storm, sympathetic with the passing of that mighty spirit. "It is the Devil come to carry old Noll off to Hell" was the comment of the Royalists, who kept high revel in Paris and elsewhere at the news of his death, though the Queen, whom long sorrow was at last making slow to hope, did not join in the jubilation. "Whether it be because my heart is so wrapped up in melancholy as to be incapable of receiving any [joy]," she wrote to Madame de Motteville, "or that I do not as yet perceive any good advantages likely to accrue to us from it, I will confess to you that I have not felt myself any very great rejoicing, my greatest being to witness that of my friends."[400]

It was not, indeed, until the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 that there seemed to be solid hope for the King of England. Then Charles left his Court at Bruges, and traversing all France, had an interview with Don Louis de Haro, the powerful minister of Spain, who received him with all ceremony as a sovereign prince. Mazarin still obstinately refused to receive him, but he had an interview with his uncle, the Duke of Orleans, at Blois, and afterwards passed a few days with his mother at Colombes, on the outskirts of Paris, where she had a small country house. Both mother and son may have been to some extent hopeful, but neither knew how near the day was when the prophecy of a French rhymester after Worcester would be fulfilled, and

CHAPTER XI
THE FOUNDRESS OF CHAILLOT

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 passions, 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 amusements 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 Bérulle, who was present, reproved her somewhat sharply for her vanity and frivolity. "Ah, mon père, 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 circumstances were peculiar, and she had little difficulty in selecting the one most fitted to them.

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 Hôtel 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 assured 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 noblest 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 passions 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 pass 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 circumstances 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 circumstances 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 superstitiously 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.

Louise de la Fayette had spent many quiet years in her convent when Henrietta first visited it in 1651.[408] She had won the respect of all the community, and she had been honoured by the special notice of Mother Chantal. "This girl will be one of the great superiors of our Order," said the aged saint. It is not probable that she and the Queen of England had met in the past, but her story cannot have been unknown to the sister of Louis XIII, and when the introduction was made by Madame de Motteville, acquaintance ripened at once into friendship. There was much in the nun's story to arouse the Queen's sympathy, for was not Louise de la Fayette one more of the victims of Richelieu?

Henrietta was received in the Rue S. Antoine with the respect due to the blood of Henry IV, and with the affectionate sympathy which her sorrows called forth, particularly from the superior,[409] a wide-minded woman who had been educated as a Protestant, and who perhaps in consequence had followed with special interest the course of events in England. But though such difficulties as had arisen among the Carmelites were not likely to occur in a convent of the Visitation, yet, from the scantiness of the accommodation, it was difficult to receive a royal lady for more than very short visits, and the position of the house in the centre of Paris rendered it rather unsuitable for such retirement as the Queen sought. Besides, her heart yearned for something that would be more truly her own. Other royal ladies had made religious foundations. Her mother had had her Carmelites, her sister-in-law had her beautiful Val de Grace. Might not she also become the foundress of a house which should shelter her while living, and cherish her memory and pray for her soul after her death? It happened that just at this time one of the principal nuns had the similar desire to extend the Order by the foundation of a daughter house. Helène Angélique Lhulier was no ordinary woman. In the heyday of her youth and beauty, "when she was the most attached to the world, and the most sought by several persons of the first quality," she left all at the bidding of S. Francis de Sales, who wrote her the following short and pithy note: "My daughter, enter religion immediately, notwithstanding all the oppositions of nature." Her force of character was remarkable, and particularly her strength of will, which, it was said, enabled her to do things which appeared impossible. All her courage and tenacity were called forth by this new enterprise, to which, learning of Henrietta's desire, she determined to devote herself. Indeed, the obstacles in the way seemed insurmountable. The house in the Rue S. Antoine was far from rich, and it had recently made a settlement in the Faubourg S. Jacques, which had exhausted its resources. The Queen of England was known to be in no position to give monetary help, and to complete the difficulties the Archbishop of Paris looked very coldly upon the scheme.

But Henrietta's friends were determined that she should have the interest and consolation on which she had set her heart. Mother Lhulier and Mother de la Fayette, whom the Queen hoped to see the true foundation-stones of the new edifice, were untiring in their efforts, and Queen Anne showed herself on this, as on many other occasions, a real friend to her widowed sister-in-law. The decision was so far made that Henrietta, though she had no money, and no prospect of money, set about the agreeable task of finding a home for the new community.

The Queen went hither and thither looking at properties which were in the market, but none pleased her so much as that which had belonged to her old friend the Marshal de Bassompierre, who was recently dead. This beautiful mansion, which had been built by Catherine de' Medici and honoured more than once by the presence of Richelieu, stood in one of the best positions in the immediate environs of the city, on rising ground overlooking the Seine, and commanding magnificent views of the surrounding country. It was approached by the leafy Cours la Reine, the most fashionable promenade in Paris, where on summer evenings as many as eight hundred coaches might be counted, and though the house and grounds were in the village of Chaillot, the Faubourg de la Conférence had crept up so that the two almost joined. To the charms of nature were added those of art. Bassompierre was one of the most accomplished men of his time, and he so lavished the resources of his ample means and of his refined taste upon his favourite residence, that it became one of the sights of Paris, and as such was visited by John Evelyn, who came away delighted with the "gardens, terraces, and rare prospects,"[410] which he beheld there. Since the death of the owner the house had fallen on evil days. Bassompierre's heir, the Count de Tillières, was unable to take possession of the property, and it became a place of very evil fame, the resort of lewd persons, who defiled its stately halls and fair walks with scenes of shameless revelry.

Henrietta was always rapid in her decisions, and she speedily made up her mind that here and nowhere else was the dwelling-place which would at once furnish an ideal convent for the religious and a pleasant retirement for herself. She hurried back to the Rue S. Antoine and carried off two of the nuns to inspect the house. They found it indeed most beautiful, and their only scruple was that it was too fine and inconsistent with their vow of poverty; but they waived this objection, not quite unwillingly perhaps, when they saw how the Queen's heart was set upon Chaillot, and how she was diverted from her sorrows by the pleasure which she took in her plans for installing her friends and herself in this charming retreat.

Mother Lhulier took legal steps to gain possession of the property, but grave difficulties, which perhaps had not been foreseen, arose. Tillières and the other heirs of Bassompierre claimed the property, but they had never been in possession of it, and their rights seem to have been ignored in the transaction with the nuns, whose purchase-money was to be applied to the liquidation of the late owner's debts. The Count, though he saved his reputation as a courtier by behaving with great civility to Henrietta, and assuring her that she was welcome to live in the house as long as she pleased, provided she did not turn it into a convent, determined to fight the matter in the law courts. He was supported by the magistrates of Chaillot, who probably did not wish to see a profitable place of pleasure closed, and by a large number of persons, some of high quality, who were in the habit of frequenting it. The pious chronicler of the Order of the Visitation[411] sees behind these human figures that of the arch-fiend himself, who was interested in preventing a piece of territory which was specially his from lapsing to the service of God. But good, as we know, is stronger than evil. The judges of the case, almost against their will, and certainly under the direct inspiration of Providence, gave the decision in favour of the nuns, whose joy was only dashed by the hard condition that a large sum of money must be forthcoming in twenty-four hours.

The case appeared hopeless. Neither Henrietta nor the nuns had a tenth of the sum required, and money was just then very scarce; but Mother Lhulier was a woman to whom seeming impossibilities were only opportunities. She made the need known to all whom she knew, and then waited in quiet assurance for the result of her appeal. Her faith was rewarded. Just before the close of the specified time of grace, a rich gentleman, who was a great friend of hers, came to say that he was willing to guarantee the whole amount.

But even now the troubles were not at an end. Tillières was determined to fight to the last, and he enlisted on his side the ecclesiastical authorities, who from the first had not looked very kindly upon the project of the new foundation. The Archbishop of Paris was still that same Jean François de Gondi who had been so deeply affronted by the refusal to allow him to officiate at Henrietta's wedding. He was now a very old man, but he was none the less willing to avenge an ancient slight. He pointed out petulantly that there were already two houses of the Visitation in Paris and another in the neighbourhood of S. Denys. That the charge of the new convent would certainly come upon the public, and that a household of fifteen persons, however pious, could not be supported for nothing. He ended up by remarking with great acerbity that exiled queens with political business in their hands should not choose religious houses as their place of retirement.

"However," we are told, "God who holds the hearts of the great in His hand, soon changed that of the Prelate," and the instrument of this happy conversion was Queen Anne. Attempts were made to play on her cupidity and that of her young son by pointing out that Chaillot had originally been a royal residence, and would make again another nice country house for the King; but she refused to listen, and devoted herself to winning over the Archbishop, who was far too good a courtier not to yield quickly to such persuasion. His views changed with a wonderful rapidity, and very soon Henrietta had the happiness of knowing that the last obstacle was removed, and that nothing stood in the way of the realization of her wish.

She herself undertook the work of preparing the house for the reception of the nuns. Hers was a busy, active nature, and she was never happier than when spending herself for those she loved. Some of the furniture she supplied herself and some was sent from the Rue S. Antoine, where the little band of women under the guidance of Mother Lhulier and Mother de la Fayette was ready to set out. The removal took place upon the 21st of June, 1651. The nuns were seen off from their old home by Vincent de Paul,[412] that strange figure of seventeenth-century Paris, whose shabby soutane was found in the salon of the noble as in the hovel of the poor, and whose advice was sought at the council table of the King as in the home of the meanest of his subjects. He was at this time director of the mother house, and though he is not known ever to have set foot within the convent of Chaillot, his memory is linked with it by the blessing which he bestowed upon its beginning.

At Chaillot Henrietta was waiting, radiant and expectant. She greeted her guests with delight, giving perhaps a specially warm welcome to two of the younger members of the little band of nine or ten—one, the only novice of the house, Eugénie Madeline Berthaud, the sister of her dear friend Madame de Motteville; the other a Scotch girl, Mary Hamilton[413] by name, whom in earlier days she had welcomed at her Court in London, but whose desire for a conventual life was such that leaving home and country she had set out for Paris, where she entered the convent in the Rue S. Antoine, without knowing a single word of the French tongue.

Henrietta led the nuns all over the house, discoursing upon its charms and conveniences, and dwelling specially upon the beauties of the situation. She had arranged that her own rooms should be in the front, overlooking the public road, while the nuns were to take the quieter apartments which faced the garden. She was surprised and disconcerted when these ladies, who were less used to palaces than she was, objected to the splendour of the lodging provided for them, and insisted upon retiring to the garrets, which they said were more suitable to their vow of poverty, and whence they were only induced to descend some days later, at the Queen's special request, and when she had carefully removed from the downstairs rooms all that savoured of worldly vanity; but neither this little difficulty nor the more serious trouble that, owing to the continued opposition of Tillières, it was necessary to defend the house with a guard of archers, could damp Henrietta's joy on such a day. She spent several hours with the nuns in happy talk and plans, and then drove back to the Palais Royal, where she was living at this time, happier perhaps than she had ever been since her husband's death.

Chaillot was honoured by letters patent from the Crown of France, which gave it the status of a royal foundation and Henrietta the title of foundress. When the enclosure was set up about a week after the arrival of the nuns, a number of distinguished persons assisted at the ceremony, though it had to be done quickly for fear of disturbance from those who had struggled so hard to keep this fair property out of the hands of the Church. Henrietta heard the first Mass which was sung in the chapel with a triumph which was all the sweeter to her bold and enterprising nature from the many difficulties which had beset the undertaking.

Congratulations were not lacking. Among the most graceful were those which Walter Montagu made public two years later in a dedication to the Queen of a volume of religious essays. "Under that notion, Madam," he wrote, "of an aspirer to a more transcendent Majestie I present your Religious Mind these entertainments: which will be the less unmannerly the greater privacie and retreat they intrude themselves upon; and truly, as your life stands now dispos'd the greater part of your time is favourable for such admissions. Since you pass the most of it in that holy retirement, whither you have carry'd up the Cross in triumph; having set That over your Head and the most tempting part (perhaps) of the whole world, as it were, under your feet.

"And, methinks, Madam, this remark may not a little indear to you the seat of your pious retirement; viz. That you, who have been dispossess'd of so many noble houses and pleasant scituations, by the worlds violence and injustice, and have had many religious receptacles (by your means consecrated) taken from you by the Prince of this world, transferring them to his profane uses: That your vertue yet should have made so eminent a reprizal upon the world's possessions in your retreat out of it. And what a comfort may it be to you to think that God has made use of you, to take from this Prince one of the chiefest holds; and convert it, as it were, into a Religious Citadel, furnish'd with such a Garrison as professing irreconcileable enmitie to him and all his partie, bears away as many conquests as it has combatants, daily singing Te Deum for their continual victories."[414]

Henrietta, as is hinted in the above passage, was not slow to take advantage of the retreat which she had won with so much difficulty. "Our good Queen," wrote Sir Richard Browne in August, 1651, "spends much of her time of late in a new monastery ... of which she is the titular foundress."[415] The more she saw of her new friends the more she loved them, and her affection was warmly returned. It became an understood thing that year by year she should pass at Chaillot the seasons of the great festivals of the Church, and her visits, which were usually for ten days or a fortnight, sometimes extended to several months. She came to look upon the convent as the best substitute for the home she had lost. There she passed the happiest days of her latter years, and there, had not a sudden death surprised her, she would have died.

Nor was her retirement without agreeable society from outside, for Chaillot was the resort of some who were among the ornaments of the Parisian world. There might often have been seen the Queen-Regent, whose visits at the time of the foundation were continued to the day when, on her dying journey to S. Germain-en-Laye, she was carried "to see this poor convent once more,"[416] and who in that holy retreat was able at last to forget the jealousies of bygone days, and to hold out the hand of cordial friendship to Louise de la Fayette. Sometimes an even greater honour was bestowed on the religious when the lad who was afterwards "le grand Monarque" appeared at the door, to be welcomed with all the ceremony due to the God-given hope of France. Not infrequently the bright and gifted Madame de la Fayette, who was winning a literary reputation, to be crowned later by the publication of La Princesse de Clèves, came to chat with her husband's sister, or to lay the foundation of that intimacy with Henrietta of England which fitted her to be the biographer of her short life. Most constant visitor of all, Madame de Motteville brought her wit, her accomplishments, and her long experience of Court life to enliven the dullness of the cloister. When the death of Queen Anne released her from the faithful attendance of years she spent a great part of her time at Chaillot, where she was the frequent companion of the Queen of England, who beguiled the long, quiet hours by recounting her past experiences, particularly her adventures during the Civil War, all of which her listener carefully wrote down and finally incorporated in the charming memoirs which were the principal occupation of her later days, and which contain many details of Henrietta's character and career lost but for her in the silence of time.

But perhaps the most romantic visitor who ever appeared at Chaillot was a runaway Princess, who found there an asylum after her conversion from the Protestant to the Catholic religion. Louise of the Palatine was a connection of the Queen of England, for she was the daughter of Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen, whose beauty had turned so many men's heads and hearts. Louise lived with her unfortunate family at The Hague, and she solaced the weary days of an exiled Princess by the study of accomplishments, especially of painting, for which she had real talent. The attractions of the Church of Rome were represented to her by a priest, who gained her ear and her confidence as an instructor in her favourite art. She determined to abandon the religion of her family; and, as she knew that her position in her mother's house would be intolerable, she sought refuge in flight, and threw herself upon the protection of her aunt by marriage, whose devotion to the Church of Rome was a matter of common knowledge. Louise was not disappointed. Henrietta, to whom the conversion of any Protestant was a matter of real interest, and who must have felt a certain satisfaction in the secession to the enemy's camp of one of the children of the Queen of Bohemia, whose Protestantism had often in the past been unfavourably compared with her Catholicism, received the girl with motherly kindness, and bestowed her at Chaillot under the care of Mother de la Fayette. Louise soon expressed a desire to enter the religious life, and it was thought that she would take the veil in the convent which sheltered her; but Mother de la Fayette, with the good sense which distinguished her, objected to the profession of a Princess, whose birth would necessitate her election to a high office, to which perhaps her personal qualities would not entitle her. So the royal lady went on to the Cistercians, who had no such scruples, and who made her Abbess of Maubuisson, near Pontoise, where she lived in much repute to a green old age, and famed perhaps as well as her younger sister Sophia, whose steadfast Protestantism was rewarded by the reversion of the crown of the Three Kingdoms, and whose descendants sit to this day upon the throne which she missed by a few weeks.

In 1654 Mother Lhulier died. She was succeeded[417] in the office of Superior, as might have been expected, by Mother de la Fayette, whose election was much desired by the Queens of both England and France. These royal ladies considerately abstained, from expressing any opinion on the subject that the nuns' choice might be free, but their wishes must have been well known, and they no doubt fell in with those of the religious. Louise de la Fayette fully justified the prophecy of Mother Chantal, and if Chaillot owed much to the force of character and strength of will of the first Superior, it owed even more to the sagacious rule of the second, who endeared herself to all, whether religious or visitors. The house was already sufficiently established, but the financial condition gave great cause for anxiety, and almost justified the ungracious forebodings of the Archbishop of Paris, though kind friends, among whom Madame de Motteville was one of the most generous, gave considerable gifts, and some of the religious, such as her sister, the first professed nun of the house, were able to bring dowries. Queen Henrietta, who had no money to give, exerted herself to procure high-born little pupils for the convent school, whose liberal pensions were indeed for some time the chief support of the house. She set the example by placing her own little daughter, Princess Henrietta, under the care of Mother de la Fayette, and, as was hoped, her presence attracted other children of equal rank, among whom was the daughter of the Duchess of Nemours, who was afterwards Queen of Portugal. No children could have had a more beautiful home or a more apt instructress; for the nun, in her long years of conventual life, had lost no whit of the graces and accomplishments of her courtly youth or of her natural kindliness of heart. Her charity, indeed, rose superior even to the acerbities of theological passion. To her care was confided one of the exiled nuns of Port Royal, and it is recorded that, in honourable contrast to the Superiors of other religious houses charged with a like burden, she treated her unwelcome guest with constant courtesy and kindness.