"Ah, look at her!" said the Queen-Regent, when she appeared in the evening: "it is easy to see she is expecting a lover. See!—how she is decked out!"
Mademoiselle blushed, but was too discreet to commit herself by a single word.
When Charles Stuart entered the Queen's saloon he looked provokingly well. His mother, nervously alive to every trifle, felt this. A man with such a constitution was not adapted to play the part of a despairing lover. When questioned by the Queen about his affairs in England, he replied that he knew nothing. Mademoiselle instantly formed a bad opinion of him. She turned to her lady in waiting, Madame de Fiesque, and whispered—
"He is too much of a Bourbon for me. Quite engrossed by trifles" (the race has not changed). "He can talk about dogs and horses and the chase to her Majesty, but he has nothing to say about the revolution in England."
Later in the evening, at the royal table, Mademoiselle was shocked at Charles's coarse appetite. He despised ortolans and Italian pastry, and threw himself upon a joint of beef. Not satisfied with that, he ended by a shoulder of mutton. "A despairing lover ought not to have such a monstrous appetite, or he should satisfy the cravings of hunger beforehand," thought Mademoiselle. He stared fixedly at her, with his big black eyes shaded by heavy eyebrows, while he was shovelling huge pieces of meat down his throat, but he never spoke. Truly this was not a fashion of pushing his suit with a fastidious princess who desired to be an empress!
Mademoiselle yawned, looked at him under her eyelids, shrugged her shapely shoulders, and called her lady in waiting to her side to amuse her. Thus passed the precious moments which were to decide the momentous question—would she, or would she not?
At length, having gorged in a prodigious manner, Charles Stuart rose. He made Mademoiselle a formal bow, and opened his mouth to speak for the first time. "I hope," he said, in very bad French, "my Lord St. Germains has explained to your highness the sentiments with which you have inspired me. I am, madame, your very humble servant."
Mademoiselle rose to her feet, made him a formal curtsey, and replied, "Sir, I am your very humble servant."
So ended this wooing; but poor Henrietta Maria, figuratively rending her clothes and sprinkling ashes on her head at such a conclusion, could not let Mademoiselle off without one Parthian shot. "I see," said she, "my son is too poor and too unfortunate for you, my niece. It is quite possible, however, that a king of eighteen may be better worth having than an elderly emperor with four children." This little ebullition of spite is pardonable in an unfortunate Queen whose heart was broken. Let it not lie heavy on her memory!
Meanwhile, the struggle between the Queen-Regent and her ministers on one side, and the parliament and Gondi on the other, had become more and more envenomed. At length the Queen-Regent, under advice of Mazarin, resolved by a coup d'état to restore the royal authority.