The only satisfactory aspect of the matter was that now the Queen felt it possible to press for the payment of her dowry. Her relatives of France, particularly Queen Anne, were liberal, but Henrietta was made to feel now and then
"how salt his food who fares Upon another's bread—how steep his path Who treadeth up and down another's stairs,"[399]
and, besides, hers was too proud a nature to relish dependence. She knew that any scheme likely to spare the coffers of France would be grateful to Mazarin, whose immense riches, splendid palace, and magnificent collection of pictures and curios, the fruit of an unbounded avarice, were the talk of Paris. The request was proffered. The reply came, and Mazarin carried it himself to the Queen. Speaking with the Italian accent, which his long years of residence in France had not been able to eradicate, he explained to her that the Protector refused to give her that for which she asked, because, as he alleged, she had never been recognized as Queen of England. The refusal was bad enough, but the gross insult with which it was accompanied could not fail to cut Henrietta to the heart, but she did not love Mazarin and she had too much spirit to betray her chagrin. "This outrage does not reflect on me," she said proudly, "but on the King, my nephew, who ought not to permit a daughter of France to be treated de concubine. I was abundantly satisfied with the late King, my lord, and with all England; these affronts are more shameful to France than to me."
This episode did not decrease Henrietta's hatred for Cromwell. It was even said by one of her women, who played the part of spy, that she was overheard plotting his murder with Lord Jermyn. But she had not long to endure his usurpation of the seat of her husband, whose regal title she believed him to have refused solely from fear of the army. On September 3rd, 1658, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester, Oliver Cromwell died amid a tumult of storm, sympathetic with the passing of that mighty spirit. "It is the Devil come to carry old Noll off to Hell" was the comment of the Royalists, who kept high revel in Paris and elsewhere at the news of his death, though the Queen, whom long sorrow was at last making slow to hope, did not join in the jubilation. "Whether it be because my heart is so wrapped up in melancholy as to be incapable of receiving any [joy]," she wrote to Madame de Motteville, "or that I do not as yet perceive any good advantages likely to accrue to us from it, I will confess to you that I have not felt myself any very great rejoicing, my greatest being to witness that of my friends."[400]
It was not, indeed, until the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 that there seemed to be solid hope for the King of England. Then Charles left his Court at Bruges, and traversing all France, had an interview with Don Louis de Haro, the powerful minister of Spain, who received him with all ceremony as a sovereign prince. Mazarin still obstinately refused to receive him, but he had an interview with his uncle, the Duke of Orleans, at Blois, and afterwards passed a few days with his mother at Colombes, on the outskirts of Paris, where she had a small country house. Both mother and son may have been to some extent hopeful, but neither knew how near the day was when the prophecy of a French rhymester after Worcester would be fulfilled, and
"la fortune N'ayant plus pour luy de rancune Le mettra plus haut qu'il n'est bas."[401]
[ [367]"Amyd the Arrests lately made one is for the seazure of the King's revenue to the use of the Parliament and in other things they doe soe imitate the late proceedings of England that it plainly appears in what schoole some of their members have been bred who make them believe they are able to instruct them how to make a rebellion wth out breaking their allegiance."—Dispatch of Sir R. Browne, January 22nd, 1649. Add. MS., 12,186, f. 9.
[ [368]"Letters from Paris received January 15th, 1648," p. 6.