Henrietta Maria

by Henrietta Haynes

Henrietta was not without solicitation to go elsewhere. "Messieurs de Port Royal," those remarkable men whose doings were causing such a stir in the religious world of France, were anxious that she should come to Port Royal, thinking perhaps to strengthen their position by so direct a connection with royalty. They offered her apartments, and, what must have been more tempting, some much-needed money. But the invitation was not accepted, though the reasons for its refusal are unknown. They may, however, be conjectured, for it is difficult to imagine Henrietta, the true daughter of Henry IV, in the repressive atmosphere of Jansenism, and it may be surmised that had she entered Port Royal she would not have remained there long.

The Rue S. Antoine was more attractive.[405] Henrietta retained a childish and pleasing memory of S. Francis himself, who, at the marriage of Christine of France, had come up to the little Princess, then aged about ten, and, according to his wont, "blending piety and politeness," had assured her that one day she should receive even greater honours than those now offered to her sister, honours which perhaps his experienced eye could see from her expression she was envying with all her childish heart. She recalled his words when she became Queen of England, and later still she read into them a deeper meaning when she felt herself to be the recipient of the honours of unusual suffering. But this link with the remote past was probably of less interest to her than the presence in the convent of a lady, destined to become her dearest personal friend, whose romantic story must be told if one of the strongest influences on Henrietta's later years is to be appreciated.

Louise de la Fayette was the daughter of one of the noblest houses of Auvergne, and she bore a name which was to be renowned in the history of France. She had a childish taste for the cloister, but when she was about fourteen years of age, her uncle, who was then Bishop of Limoges, presented her to Queen Anne, who received her as one of her maids of honour.

Louise was a beautiful girl, and she possessed besides many charms and accomplishments, of which a sweet singing voice was not the least. She quickly made her mark at Court; but, if her biographers are to be believed, she retained her simple, pious spirit, and preferred remaining quietly in her room to direct attendance upon her royal mistress, whose jealousy, indeed, was soon aroused by the unusual interest shown in the girl by her husband.

The relations between Louis XIII and his wife were, as is well known, most unsatisfactory; but at the same time the King was a man of slow passions and of a certain dull virtue. He liked the society of pretty women, but while he loaded his favourites with honours and confidences, which must have cut Anne's proud spirit to the quick, he was usually strictly Platonic in his intercourse with them. To this position he elected Louise de la Fayette. She danced for him, sang for him, talked to him, and every day seemed to increase the spell which her vivacity cast over his slow spirit. But other eyes were watching her. In the French Court of that time all depended upon the frown or smile of Richelieu, who himself was ever on the watch to gain valuable allies. He marked Louise de la Fayette, and determined to enlist her in his army of spies.

But in this case the Cardinal had reckoned without his host. Louise was only a young girl, but she had a spirit capable even of resisting Richelieu. "She had more courage than all the men of the Court,"[406] wrote Madame de Motteville. She refused to pass on the secrets of the King, or to play in any way into the hands of his minister, whose jealous anger was aroused and who determined to part her from her royal friend.

It is not surprising that in these circumstances the girl's mind should have reverted to her old wishes for a conventual life, but there was another reason, which, long after, in the safe retreat of Chaillot, she confessed to her friend Madame de Motteville. Louis was a virtuous man, but he was an unloved and unloving husband, and she was young and beautiful. There were signs that the Platonic friendship was ripening into something stronger and warmer. Louise became alarmed. That which to many women was an honour, to her pure and upright soul was disgrace unspeakable, and she determined to fly to the only refuge which the times and the circumstances permitted her, and to bury her sorrows and her temptations within the walls of the cloister.

It was hard to persuade the King to part with her, but she had a powerful ally. Richelieu sent for the royal confessor, Father Caussin, the Jesuit, and in the bland tones which he knew so well how to use, he gravely discussed with him the moral dangers of such a friendship as that which existed between Louis and his wife's maid of honour. Not, he hastened to add, that he believed that any harm was done, but such things were always dangerous. The Cardinal thought that he was exactly adapting his remarks to his audience; but Caussin, who hated and distrusted him, was too acute to be taken in, and had events gone no farther Louise de la Fayette might have remained in the world for Father Caussin. But the girl herself, who had better reason than any one to know the truth of Richelieu's words, and whose own heart was beginning to betray her, sought the Jesuit's advice. At first he was a little rough with her. He did not believe that a girl of seventeen, luxuriously brought up and petted like "a bird of the Indies," could really desire to embrace the austerities and abnegations of a conventual life. He hinted that she was piqued by the refusal of the King to grant her some request, or that her self-love had been wounded in one of the little contretemps of Court life. Louise answered gently and quietly. Nothing had occurred to distress or alarm her in any way. The King's kindness was unchanged, and so great that at any time he would enable her to make a splendid marriage; but she had only one desire, and that was to leave the world. Caussin then pointed out to her the hardness of the cloister for a girl brought up as she had been, but her answer again was ready. She was not thinking of a stern Order, for which she knew her health to be unequal; she wished to enter among the Visitandines, or Filles de Sainte Marie, as they were more commonly called, whose rule was expressly framed for gently nurtured and delicate women. The only regret she would carry away with her, she added, with an irresistible touch of human nature, was the knowledge that her retirement from the Court would give pleasure to Cardinal Richelieu.

By these arguments Caussin was won over, but the King still had to be reckoned with. Louis, however, was superstitiously religious, and pressed at the same time by his confessor, by the Cardinal, and by Louise, he was unable to resist. The day of departure arrived; the girl went off gay and smiling, though her heart was sinking, so that when she thought no one was looking she crept aside to catch a last glimpse of the man she loved; but many of the bystanders were in tears, and even Queen Anne was grave and sympathetic. As for the King, his voice was so broken by grief that he could scarcely whisper the words of farewell, and afterwards his misery was so excessive and so prolonged as to give colour to the suspicions that had been abroad. He could not bear to remain in the place which had witnessed his idol's departure, and he fled to Versailles, at that time a small hunting-box, where he remained for some time plunged in the deepest melancholy.[407]