At the Louvre, next to the Queen-Mother, the most profitable objects of a courtier’s devotion were the Maréchal and the Maréchale d’Ancre. They were Marie’s most intimate and inseparable friends. Unworthy of such a position, no doubt: but the wife of Henry IV. was hardly happy enough willingly to dispense with those who had followed her from Florence. Leonora Galigaï, her nurse’s daughter, first the companion of her childhood, had been appointed head of her maids: of low birth, but extremely clever, and only too capable of managing her mistress; though her own supposed account of her influence, “that of a clever woman over a dull fool,” seems to have been one of the many inventions of her enemies. A small, dark, ugly, keen-faced creature, Leonora had fallen in love with the handsome adventurer Concini, who had followed the Queen to France in search of fortune. They were married, and together they climbed the heights they desired. Concini swaggered among nobles and princes, the very type of a royal favourite. He was an insolent, magnificent bully, with whom the greatest in the land had to reckon. Yet, though envied and slandered, he was not entirely unpopular, even at Court. Bassompierre observed that he was neither perfection nor a fool. He had the daring courage which came of belief in his own lucky star. He was good-natured and kind, except to his wife; with her, in spite of their mutual interests, he quarrelled incessantly, and they lived mostly apart. But the many scandalous jokes, songs and stories which dealt with the supposed love-affairs of Concini and the Queen are pronounced by modern historians to be without foundation.
For some years the husband and wife concerned themselves little with politics. Money and position, especially money, of which Leonora was excessively greedy, were their favourite objects. They bought a palace in the Rue de Tournon, near the old Hôtel de Luxembourg, and furnished it splendidly. But Concini lived chiefly in a house near the river, at the south-east corner of the small garden of the Louvre, between it and the old Hôtel de Bourbon. By a bridge from the house to the garden he could communicate with his wife’s apartments, above those of the Queen.
Leonora left her rooms seldom and unwillingly, except for necessary attendance on her mistress. She was a nervous invalid, and depended much on Jewish doctors, quack remedies, and—according to her enemies—the black art. We are also told, however, that she confessed regularly and caused the Bible to be read to her. M. Batiffol, in his picturesque study of the time, describes how she sat all day threading beads or playing the guitar—she was a fine musician—in the midst of rich hoards of every description: tapestry, embroidery, mirrors, cabinets, carpets, cushions, counterpanes, of the most splendid materials; endless quantities of gold and silver plate; wardrobes and chests full of beautiful garments that she seldom wore. Beyond these treasures, she cared for little but money: when she meddled with politics, it was for the sake of money, or for her husband’s advancement; and this last matter interested her keenly in the exciting changes of that winter, which had carried her, sorely against her will, on a most trying journey.
The return from that journey found the Maréchal d’Ancre, now Lieutenant-General of Normandy, at the height of his power, though a quarrel with the people of the markets lost him some popularity. The reconstruction of the Ministry, the fall of Sillery, the temporary superseding of Jeannin, President of the Council, and later of the Duc de Villeroy, left the way open for clever men such as Barbin and Mangot, both followers of Concini. Both admirers, too, of the Bishop of Luçon, who very soon, by their means, was to become a Minister of State.
From the point of view of a courtier or a politician, the inmates of the Louvre least worth considering were the young King and Queen. Both were born in 1601, and in that summer were not quite fifteen years old: two children, with the minds and tastes of children, on whom etiquette weighed heavily, who were shy of each other, and cared only for their own chosen companions and sports.
The little Queen seems to have been singularly childish, for a princess brought up in the stately Court of Spain. Surrounded at first by her Spanish ladies, who adored and petted her, she made grave ambassadors anxious, though her coquettish beauty attracted the French. But there was a lack of majesty, a love of jokes and games, an impatience of everything serious, a quick and wilful temper, an amazingly short memory, combined with a frank regret for her old life—“bien souvent l’Espagne me manque,” she wrote home in the early days—hardly suitable to a Queen of France. Her new subjects did not complain; in truth, after the first rejoicings of her arrival, they saw little of her. Sometimes she appeared at Court balls, ballets and carrousels, brilliant in her fresh youth, with her dazzlingly white skin, large eyes, chestnut hair, and the exquisite hands which were her crowning beauty. Sometimes she drove out in a coach to Saint-Germain, and spent the day hunting and hawking with the King, who hardly cared for her company at any other time. Her chaplain, the Bishop of Luçon, attended on her at the Louvre as a most formal duty. Personally, Anne never liked him. Though not yet too terrible, he was always too serious for her. But the Spanish ambassador wrote of him to Philip III.: “There are not two men in France so zealous for the service of God, of our Crown, and of the public weal.”
Time was to show whether his Excellency was right on all or any of these points.
Louis XIII. had been an attractive little child, and was now a handsome, simple, straightforward boy, whose health and temper, unluckily, had been ruined by mismanagement. The diary of his physician, Hérouard—curious if unpleasant reading—shows us a child brought up on pills and potions quite as much as on food. Add constant and severe whippings for every small fault, and we have the training that Henry IV. and Marie de Médicis, here in entire agreement, thought fitting for their eldest son. Long after Louis was King of France the floggings continued, enraging interludes to Court etiquette and ceremonies. “Give me less manners and less whipping!” the poor boy cried one day, when his mother and her ladies rose and curtseyed on His Majesty’s entrance.
No wonder that the face he turned to the outside world—including, for him, his mother and his wife—was sulky and misanthropic. He had affection to give; but it was all for the one or two special friends who understood him, and who made it their business to help and indulge him in the sports he cared about; hunting and hawking three or four days a week in the forests and the open country near Paris; while in the intervals there were rabbits and small birds to be caught in the precincts of the Louvre and the Tuileries, and on wet days various indoor amusements—cooking, carpentering, turning, teaching his little dogs tricks, building card castles, and so on. He was passionately fond of music. Court functions bored him terribly; and though forced, after his majority, to attend the Council that ruled in his name, and behaving there with sufficient dignity and intelligence, he took very little active interest in affairs of State. This carelessness, though more apparent than real, exactly suited his mother, her favourites and her ministers. France was given to understand that the young King was too delicate, too incapable, to act for himself in any public way.
It was not unnatural that all who had political or social ends to gain should have thought it safe to ignore the King and Queen as children of no account. But Louis XIII. had one trusted friend; and the Bishop of Luçon, with many others, was bitterly to repent a too low estimation of the powers of the Sieur de Luynes.