No sooner has he uttered these words than the Queen, who stands facing the Cardinal, staggers backwards. A deadly pallor overspreads her face. She totters, tries to grasp the arm of the chair from which she has risen, and before Richelieu, who watches her agony with eyes rather of sorrow than of anger, can catch her, she has fallen fainting on the floor.
At his cries the Queen’s ladies appear. He leaves her to their care, and proceeds to the apartments of Anne of Austria, whom, through Madame de Chevreuse, he informs of what has occurred.
Anne of Austria, on hearing that the Queen-mother was disgraced, saw in her unfortunate mother-in-law, who had never ceased to persecute her and to arouse the jealousy of the King, only an unhappy parent. She flew to her, threw herself into her arms, and readily promised to employ all the influence she possessed to mitigate the royal wrath.
CHAPTER XXXII.
LOVE AND TREASON.
ANNE OF AUSTRIA has left Compiègne and the royal prisoner, and is now at Saint-Germain. The château stands upon the crest of a hill, backed by a glorious forest that darkens the heights encircling Paris.
It is spring; the air is warm and genial, the sky mildly blue; light clouds temper the bright sunshine that plays upon the southern façade of the palace, and glistens among the elms which form magnificent avenues in the surrounding park.
The King has not yet returned, and the Queen and her ladies, relieved of his dreary presence, revel in unusual freedom. Concerts, suppers, dances, repasts in the forest, and moonlight walks on the terrace, are their favourite diversions. Anne of Austria has not positively forgotten the lonely captive at Compiègne, but is too much engrossed with her own affairs to remember more than her promise to assist her. That atmosphere of flattery a woman loves so well and accepts as an offering exacted by her beauty breathes around her. Monsieur Gaston, Duc d’Orléans, the King’s only brother, is always by her side. Monsieur is gay, polished, gallant; tall and slight like his brother, and pale-faced, but not, as with Louis, with the pallor of disease. He has much of his mother’s versatile nature without her violent temper. Like her he is fickle, weak, and treacherous, incapable of any deep or stable feeling. Monsieur talks to the Queen of Madrid, and sympathises with her attachment to her brother, to whom Anne writes almost daily long letters in cipher (always committed to the care of the Duchesse de Chevreuse), notwithstanding the war between France and Spain. The chivalrous Duc de Montmorenci, more formal and reserved than Monsieur, but equally devoted; the Duc de Bellegarde, no longer the ideal of manly beauty dear to the heart of poor Gabrielle d’Estrées, but grey-headed and middle-aged, though still an ardent servant of the fair, with the chivalric manners and soldier-like freedom of the former reign; gallant, rough, generous Bassompierre, who was to pay so dearly by twelve years’ imprisonment in the Bastille his opposition to the Cardinal; and Maréchal d’Ornano, the beau sabreur of that day, were also in attendance, each one the object of the King’s morbid jealousy.
Mademoiselle de Hautefort rarely leaves the Queen. She rejoices almost more than her mistress in the King’s absence. The Duchesse de Chevreuse, bewitching and spiteful, closely attended by the Comtes Chalais and Louvigni, whom she plays one against the other; the Duchesse de Montbazon, her step-mother, whose imperious eyes demand worship from all who approach her, ever in the company of De Rancé,[24]—by-and-by to found the order of La Trappe,—are some of the Ladies who form the Queen’s Court.
One moonlit night the Queen and her ladies had lingered late on the stately terrace, built by Henry IV., which borders the forest and extends for two miles along the edge of the heights on which the château stands. The Queen and her brother-in-law, Monsieur Duc d’Orléans, have seated themselves somewhat apart from the rest on the stone balustrade that fronts the steep descent into the plains around Paris. Vineyards line the hillside, which falls rapidly towards the Seine flowing far beneath, its swelling banks rich with groves, orchards, villas, and gardens. Beyond, the plain lay calm and still, wrapped in dark shadows, save where the moonbeams fall in patches and glints of silvery light. Of the great city which spreads itself beyond, not a vestige is to be seen. All human lights are extinguished, but the moon rides high in the heavens in fields of azure brightness, and the stars shine over the topmost heights, where, on the very verge of the horizon, and facing the terrace, the towers of the Cathedral of Saint-Denis break the dusky sky-line.
A range of hills links this far-off distance with the sombre masses of the adjoining forest. Great masses of trees surge up black in front, swaying hither and thither in the night breeze; the rustling of their leaves is the only sound that breaks the silence. For a time the Queen sits motionless.