CHAPTER XIII.
CHARLES STUART.
LOUISE DE MONTPENSIER—only daughter of Gaston, Duc d'Orléans, second son of Henry IV. and of Marie de Bourbon-Montpensier—was, as has been said, the greatest heiress in Europe. Her girlhood was passed with Anne of Austria. When Louis XIV. was born the Queen called her ma fille. When Mademoiselle romped with the boy-king, she addressed him as mon mari.
In spite of the long nose of the Bourbons, la Grande Mademoiselle, as she was called, was fairly good looking. She was tall and shapely, with regular features, a good skin, finely cut blue eyes, pencilled eyebrows, a large, though well-formed mouth, and good teeth. Flowing ringlets of light hair framed her face and fell over her rounded shoulders. She had, moreover, an unmistakable air of command.
Her character may be best described in negatives. She was not a heroine, although circumstances made her appear one. She understood politics, but had little capacity for a ruler. She had no fortitude, although possessing a certain elevation of character that lifted her above commonplace. She was selfish and cold-hearted, yet capable of warm attachments. She was ostentatious in the use of her great wealth, but not charitable. She was blinded by conceit, yet was not wanting in shrewdness and judgment. She was haughty, yet loved to condescend to the populace. She was excessively ridiculous, yet affected extreme dignity. Whatever advantages she possessed were but too well known to herself. Of her faults—and they were many—she was entirely ignorant. Placed between two parties, the Queen and the Fronde, she was courted by both, and grew headstrong and ambitious in consequence. Although she ardently desired to marry her cousin Louis XIV., she went out of her way to offend, nay, even to outrage him. Yet unconscious of all her follies, to the day of her death she firmly believed she was by wealth, position, and genius raised upon a pedestal which all Europe contemplated with admiring curiosity. Every crowned bachelor within the civilised world, according to her, sought her hand in marriage.
After the defeat at Worcester, Charles Stuart escaped to the Continent. His mother had already fled to France. Poor Henrietta Maria (wrinkled, and prematurely old, with tear-furrowed cheeks, and dull, hollow eyes, her fragrant curls, so often painted by Vandyke, grown grey, her royal carriage bowed by the weight of adversity) lived with her young daughter Henriette, afterwards Duchesse d'Orléans, sister-in-law of Louis XIV., at the Louvre, in right of her birth as Fille de France. For a time this Queen of Shadows, the relict of a defunct monarchy, bore the splendour of her former state. But one by one her ladies in waiting, grooms of the chamber, maids of honour, footmen, chamberlains, and pages disappeared. At last she grew too poor even to procure sufficient fuel to keep out the winter cold. Though living in a palace, she was glad, with the young princess her daughter, to lie in bed for the sake of warmth.