Anne of Austria uttered no complaint. She showed no anger, but her pride was deeply wounded, and amongst her ladies and her friends her joyous raillery did not spare the King. Reports of her flirtations also, as well as of her bon mots and her mimicry, heightened by the malice of those whose interest it was to keep them asunder, reached Louis, and alienated him more and more. Anne, too young to be fully aware of the growing danger of her position, vain of her success, and without either judicious friends or competent advisers, took no steps to reconcile herself to her husband. Coldness and estrangement rapidly grew into downright dislike and animosity; suspicions were exaggerated into certainty, until at last she came to be treated as a conspirator and a criminal.
The age was an age of intrigue, treachery, and rebellion. The growing power of the nobles narrowed the authority of the throne. The incapacity of the King strengthened the pretensions of the princes. Spain, perpetually at war with France, sought its dismemberment by most disloyal conspiracies. Every disaffected prince or rebellious noble found a home at the Court of Philip, brother of Anne of Austria.
Thus Louis knew nothing of royalty but its cares and dangers. As a boy, browbeaten and overborne by his mother, when arrived at an age when his own sense and industry might have remedied defects of education, he took it for granted that his ignorance was incapacity, his timidity constitutional deficiency.
A prime minister was absolutely indispensable to such a monarch, and Louis at least showed some discernment in selecting for that important post the Bishop of Luçon (Cardinal Richelieu), the protégé of his mother.
Estranged from his wife, pure in morals, and correct in conduct, Louis, still a mere youth, yearned for female sympathy. A confidante was as necessary as a minister—one as immaculate as himself, into whose ear he could, without fear of scandal, murmur the griefs and anxieties of his life. Such a woman he found in Mademoiselle de Hautefort, maid of honour to the Queen. Her modesty and her silence first attracted him. Her manners were reserved, her speech soft and gentle. She was naturally of a serious turn of mind, and had been carefully educated. She took great apparent interest in all the King said to her. Her conversation became so agreeable to him, that he dared by degrees to confide to her his loneliness, his misery, and even his bodily infirmities, which were neither few nor slight. This intimacy, to a solitary young King who longed for affection, yet delicately shrunk from the slightest semblance of intrigue, was alluring in the highest degree.
Long, however, ere Louis had favoured her with his preference she had given her whole heart to her mistress, Anne of Austria. Every word the King uttered was immediately repeated to the Queen, with such comments as caused the liveliest entertainment to that lovely princess, who treated the liaison as an admirable joke, and entreated her maid of honour to humour the King to the very utmost, so as to afford her the greatest possible amount of amusement.
The Court is at Compiègne. Since the days of Clotaire it has been a favourite hunting-lodge of the Kings of France. One vast façade stretches along verdant banks sloping to the river Oise, across which an ancient bridge (on which Jeanne d’Arc, fighting against the English, was taken prisoner) leads into the sunny little town. On the farther side of the château a magnificent terrace, bordered by canals, links it to the adjoining forest. So close to this terrace still press the ancient trees and woodland alleys, backed by rising hills crowned with lofty elms, and broken by deep hollows where feathery beeches wave, that even to this day the whole scene faithfully represents an ancient chase. So immense is the château that the two Queens, Marie de’ Medici and Anne of Austria, could each hold distinct Courts within its walls. Marie, in the suite called the “Apartments of the Queens-dowager of France,” then hung with ancient tapestry and painted in fresco, looking over the grassy lawns beside the river and the town; Anne, in the stately rooms towards the forest and the woodland heights.
Within a vaulted room, the walls hung with Cordova leather stamped in patterns of gorgeous colours, Anne of Austria is seated at her toilette. Before her is a mirror, framed in lace and ribbons, placed on a silver table. She wears a long white peignoir thrown over a robe of azure satin. Her luxuriant hair is unbound and falls over her shoulders; Doña Estafania, her Spanish dresser, who has never left her, assisted by Madame Bertant, combs and perfumes it, drawing out many curls and ringlets from the waving mass, which, at a little distance, the morning sunshine turns into a shower of gold. Around her stand her maids of honour, Mademoiselles de Guerchy, Saint-Mégrin, and de Hautefort. The young Queen is that charming anomaly, a Spanish blonde. She has large blue eyes that can languish or sparkle, entreat or command, pencilled eyebrows, and a mouth full-lipped and rosy. She has the prominent nose of her family; her complexion, of the most dazzling fairness, is heightened by rouge. She is not tall, but her royal presence, even in youth, lends height to her figure. When she smiles her face expresses nothing but innocence and candour; but she knows how to frown, and to make others frown also.
There is a stir among the attendants, and the King enters. He is assiduous in saluting her Majesty at her lever when Mademoiselle de Hautefort is present. Louis XIII. has inherited neither the rough though martial air of his father, nor the beauty of his Italian mother. His face is long, thin, and sallow; his hair dark and scanty. He is far from tall, and very slight, and an indescribable air of melancholy pervades his whole person. As Louis approaches her, Anne is placing a diamond pendant in her ear; her hands are exquisitely white and deliciously shaped, and she loves to display them. She receives the King, who timidly advances, with sarcastic smiles and insolent coldness. While he is actually addressing her, she turns round to her lady in waiting, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, who stands behind her chair, holding a hand-mirror set in gold, whispers in her ear and laughs, then points with her dainty finger, bright with costly rings, to the King, who stands before her. Louis blushes, waits some time for an answer, which she does not vouchsafe to give; then, greatly embarrassed, retreats into a corner near the door, and seats himself.
The Duchesse de Chevreuse, the friend and confidante of Anne of Austria, widow of the King’s favourite the Duc de Luynes, now a second time