Were they in the plot? That did not follow. For, besides the professional pride which forbade them to belie themselves, they might fear to discover more than they wished—to act in a very uncourtier-like manner by discovering traces but too evident of poisoning. In such case the alliance, perhaps, might have been broken off, and the projects of both King and clergy for the Dutch and English crusade have come to nothing. Such blundering fellows would never have been forgiven. So the physicians were prudent and politic. It was altogether a grievous spectacle. Here was a woman universally beloved, yet who inspired no one with any strong feeling. Everybody was interested—went and came; but no one would assume any responsibility, no one obeyed her last and constant prayer. She wanted to eject the poison by the aid of an emetic. No one dared to give it her. “Look,” she exclaimed, “my nose is gone—shrunk to nothing.” It was observed, in fact, that it was already like that of an eight days’ corpse. For all that, they stuck to the doctors’ opinion: “It is nothing.” With only one exception, nobody seemed uneasy about her; some even laughed. Mademoiselle de Montpensier alone showed indignation at all this heartless indifference, and had the courage to remark that “At any rate they should endeavour to save her soul,” and went in search of a confessor.
The people belonging to the household, one and all, recommended that the curé of St. Cloud should be sent for, certain that, as he was unknown to the Duchess, their mistress would confess nothing of moment to him. Mademoiselle, however, would not hear of him as confessor. “Fetch Bossuet,” she said, “and meanwhile call in the Canon Feuillet.”
Feuillet was a very wary ecclesiastic, and quite as prudent as the physicians. He persuaded Madame to offer herself up as a sacrifice to Heaven without accusing anyone. The Duchess said, in fact, to Marshal de Grammont, “They have poisoned me—but by mistake.” She exhibited throughout an admirable discretion and perfect gentleness. She embraced the Duke, her husband, whispering to him—in allusion to the outrageous arrest of the Chevalier de Lorraine—that she had “never been unfaithful to him.”
The English Ambassador having arrived, she spoke to him in English, telling him to conceal from her brother that she had been poisoned. The Abbé Feuillet, who had not quitted her, overhearing the word “poison,” stopped her, saying, “Madame, think only of God now!” Bossuet, who next came in, continues Feuillet, confirmed her in those thoughts of self-abnegation and discretion. For a long time back, she had looked to Bossuet to console her in that supreme moment. She desired that after her decease an emerald ring should be given to him which she had reserved for that purpose.
By degrees, however, the unfortunate Duchess found herself left almost alone. The King had taken his departure, after manifesting great emotion, and the Duke also in tears. All the Court had disappeared. Mademoiselle de Montpensier was too much affected to bid her farewell. She was sinking fast, felt an inclination to sleep, woke up suddenly, inquired for Bossuet, who placed a crucifix in her hand, and, whilst in the act of embracing it, she expired. The clock at that moment struck three, and the first faint light of dawn was visible (June 29th, 1670).
The English Ambassador expressed a desire to be present at the post-mortem examination, and the doctors did not fail to pronounce the cause of her death to be an attack of cholera morbus (so Mademoiselle de Montpensier states), and that mortification had for some time past set in. He was not the dupe of such opinion; neither was Charles II., who, at first, indignantly refused to receive the letter addressed to him by the Duke of Orleans. But to persevere in such a line of conduct would have been to bring about a rupture of the pending negotiation and the loss of the French subsidy. He calmed down, therefore, and pretended to believe the explanations that were offered him. It was, however, remembered that the Chevalier de Lorraine, the Duke’s unworthy favourite, had openly accused Madame as the instigator of his banishment; and Saint-Simon asserts that the King, before consenting to his brother marrying again, was resolved to know whether he had really had the Duchess poisoned, and with that view summoned Furnon, Henrietta’s master of the household. From him he learned that the poison had been sent from Italy by the Chevalier de Lorraine to Beauveau, equerry to the Duchess, and to D’Effiat, her captain of the guard, but without the knowledge of the Duke. “It was that maître-d’hôtel who himself related it,” says Saint-Simon, “to M. Joly de Fleury, from whom I had it.”
A story but too probable. But that which appears incredible, and which nevertheless is quite certain, was that the poisoners were perfectly successful, that shortly after the crime the King permitted the Chevalier de Lorraine to serve in the army, appointed him marshal-de-camp, and allowed him to return to Court. What explanation, what palliation, can there be for such an enormous outrage to our common humanity? It has truly been said that “the intrigues which led to the murder of the unfortunate Henrietta of England present such a scene of accumulated horrors and iniquity, that, for the honour of human nature, one could wish that the curtain had never been raised which hid them from our knowledge.”
The last political act of the Duchess of Orleans was one of decisive import, and calculated to secure for a long time the subjection of the English nation. Although seriously afflicted by the death of his sister, the thoughtless Charles seemed especially occupied with the design of bringing over to England the attractive maid-of-honour who had made such a lively impression upon him, as had been intended, during the short visit to Dover already mentioned. On the melancholy tidings of Henrietta’s death reaching England, the profligate Duke of Buckingham was despatched to Paris as envoy extraordinary, ostensibly to inquire into the particulars of that catastrophe but in reality, as Burnet says, to conclude the treaty. This he accomplished; France agreeing to give two millions of livres (£150,000) for Charles’s conversion to popery, and three millions a year for the Dutch war. Large sums of money were also distributed to Buckingham, Arlington, and Clifford.
Buckingham, that complaisant companion of “the merry monarch,” who, “everything by turns and nothing long,” having been the first to observe the impression the mignonne maid-of-honour had made on the King’s susceptible fancy, had little hesitation in attaching to his diplomatic office the very undignified one of Sir Pandarus, and therefore with a brave defiance of decorum bent all his efforts to overcome the scruples, if any there might be, lingering in the mind of Louise with regard to transferring herself to the service of the Queen of England, poor Catherine of Braganza. As she was then placed through the death of the Duchess of Orleans, a convent was the only retreat Mademoiselle Querouaille could look forward to in France; and as religious seclusion was not at all congenial to the lively nymph, she was not found impracticable to Buckingham’s overtures. Nor were the latter’s efforts entirely disinterested in the matter. He had lately had a fierce quarrel with “old Rowley’s” imperious mistress, the Duchess of Cleveland, and having sworn hatred and revenge against that profligate beauty, sought to turn the French maid-of-honour to his own advantage by raising up a rival in the King’s affections, who should be wholly governed by himself. He therefore represented seriously to Louis that the only way to secure Charles to French interests was to give him a French mistress; and he told Charles jestingly that he ought to take charge of his sister’s favourite attendant, if only out of “decent tenderness for her memory.”
The delicate affair, in short, was soon arranged; an invitation, so formally worded as to wear the semblance of propriety, was sent from the English Court, and Louise immediately departed for Dieppe, escorted by part of the Duke of Buckingham’s suite, and his grace’s promise to join her with all convenient speed. But, as usual with the man whose “ambition was frequently nothing more than a frolic, and whose best designs were for the foolishest ends,” who “could keep no secret nor execute any design without spoiling it,” he totally forgot both the lady and his promise, and, leaving the forsaken demoiselle at Dieppe to cross the Straits as she best might, sailed to England by way of Calais. Lord Montagu, then our Ambassador at Paris, hearing of the Duke’s escapade, immediately sent over for a yacht, and ordered some of his own attendants to convey her, with all honour, to Whitehall, where she was received by Lord Arlington with all respect, and forthwith appointed maid-of-honour to the Queen.