G. P. R. James

Which shows that diadems are not without their thorns.

THIS shall be a short Chapter, I am determined; because it is one of the most important in the whole book.

During the absence of the King and Chavigni in the chase, two arrivals had taken place at Chantilly very nearly at the same moment. Luckily, however, the Queen had just time to alight from her carriage, and seek her apartments, before the Cardinal de Richelieu entered the court-yard, thus avoiding an interview with her deadly enemy on the very threshold,—an interview, from which she might well have drawn an inauspicious augury, without even the charge of superstition.

As soon as Chavigni had (as far as possible) provided for his own safety by despatching the order for Philip’s arrest, he proceeded to the apartments of Richelieu, and there he gave that Minister an exact account of all he had heard, observed, and done; commenting particularly upon the violent and irascible mood of the King, and the advantages which might be thence derived, if they could turn his anger in the direction that they wished.

In the mean while Louis proceeded to the apartments of the Queen, not indeed hurried on by any great affection for his wife, but desirous of seeing his children, whom he sincerely loved, notwithstanding the unaccountable manner in which he so frequently absented himself from them.

Never very attentive to dress, Louis the Thirteenth, when any thing disturbed or irritated him, neglected entirely the ordinary care of his person. In the present instance he made no change in his apparel, although the sports in which he had been engaged had not left it in a very fit state to grace a drawing-room. Thus, in a pair of immense jack-boots, his hat pressed down upon his brows, and his whole dress soiled, deranged, and covered with dust, he presented himself in the saloon where Anne of Austria sat surrounded by the young Princes and the ladies who had accompanied her to Chantilly.

The Queen immediately rose to receive her husband, and advanced towards him with an air of gentle kindness, mixed however with some degree of apprehension; for to her eyes, long accustomed to remark the various changes of his temper, the disarray of his apparel plainly indicated the irritation of his mind.

Louis saluted her but coldly, and without taking off his hat. “I am glad to see you well, Madam,” said he, and passed on to the nurse who held in her arms the young Dauphin.

The child had not seen its father for some weeks, and now perceiving a rude-looking ill-dressed man, approaching hastily towards it, became frightened, hid its face on the nurse’s shoulder, and burst into tears.

The rage of the King now broke the bounds of common decency.

“Ha!” exclaimed he, stamping on the ground with his heavy boot, till the whole apartment rang: “is it so, Madam? Do you teach my children, also, to dislike their father?”

“No, my Lord, no, indeed!” replied Anne of Austria, in a tone of deep distress, seeing this unfortunate contretems so strangely misconstrued to her disadvantage. “I neither teach the child to dislike you, nor does he dislike you; but you approached Louis hastily, and with your hat flapped over your eyes, so that he does not know you. Come hither, Louis,” she continued, taking the Dauphin out of the nurse’s arms. “It is your father; do not you know him? Have I not always told you to love him?”

The Dauphin looked at his mother, and then at the King, and perfectly old enough to comprehend what she said, he began to recognize his father, and held out his little arms towards him. But Louis turned angrily away.

“A fine lesson of dissimulation!” he exclaimed; and advanced towards his second son, who then bore the title of Duke of Anjou. “Ah, my little Philip,” he continued, as the infant received him with a placid smile,—“you are not old enough to have learned any of these arts. You can love your father without being told to show it, like an ape at a puppet-show.”

At this new attack, the Queen burst into tears.

“Indeed, indeed, my Lord,” she said, “you wrong me. Oh, Louis! how you might have made me love you once!” and her tears redoubled at the thought of the past. “But I am a weak fool,” she continued, wiping the drops from her eyes, “to feel so sensibly what I do not deserve—At present your Majesty does me deep injustice.—I have always taught both my children to love and respect their father. That name is the first word that they learn to pronounce; and from me they learn to pronounce it with affection. But oh, my Liege! what will these dear children think in after years, when they see their father behave to their mother, as your Majesty does towards me?”

“Pshaw!” exclaimed the King, “let us have no more of all this. I hate these scenes of altercation. Fear not, Madam; the time will come, when these children will learn to appreciate us both thoroughly.”

“I hope not, my Lord"—replied the Queen fervently—“I hope not. From me, at least, they shall never learn all I have to complain of in their father.”

Had Anne of Austria reflected, she would have been silent; but it is sometimes difficult to refrain when urged by taunts and unmerited reproach. That excellent vial of water, which the Fairy bestowed upon the unhappy wife, is not always at hand to impede the utterance of rejoinders, which, like rejoinders in the Court of Chancery, only serve to urge on the strife a degree farther, whether they be right or wrong. In the present case the King’s pale countenance flushed with anger. “Beware, Madam, beware!” exclaimed he. “You have already been treated with too much lenity—Remember the affair of Chalais!”

“Well, Sir!” replied the Queen, raising her head with an air of dignity: “Your Majesty knows, and feels, and has said, that I am perfectly guiltless of that miserable plot. My Lord, my Lord! if you can lay your head upon your pillow conscious of innocence like mine, you will sleep well; my bosom at least is clear.”

“See that it be, Madam,” replied Louis, darting upon her one of those fiery and terrible glances in which the whole vindictive soul of his Italian mother blazed forth in his eyes with the glare of a basilisk. “See that it be, Madam; for there may come worse charges than that against you.—I have learned from a sure source that a Spaniard is seeking my overthrow, and a woman is plotting my ruin,” he continued, repeating the words of the Astrologer; “that a Prince is scheming my destruction, and a Queen is betraying my trust—so, see that your bosom be clear, Madam.” And passing quickly by her, he left the apartment, exclaiming loud enough for all within it to hear, “Where is his Eminence of Richelieu? Some one, give him notice that the King desires his presence when he has leisure.”

Anne of Austria clasped her hands in silence, and looking up to Heaven seemed for a moment to petition for support under the new afflictions she saw ready to fall upon her; and then without a comment on the painful scene that had just passed, returned to her ordinary employments.