CHAPTER XII
THE END
La mort a des rigueurs à nulle autre pareilles; Ou a beau la prier, La cruelle qu'elle est, se bouche les oreilles, Et nous laisse crier.
Le pauvre en sa cabine, où le chaume le couvre, Est sujet à ses lois; Et la garde qui veille aux barrières du Louvre, N'en défend point nos rois. François De Malherbe
In the end the Restoration came as a joyful surprise to Queen Henrietta and her sons. After all the struggles, after all the intrigues, after all the schemes, Charles Stuart returned to the throne of his father by the free choice of a people afraid of a military despotism, weary of the disorders which had followed the death of Cromwell, and remembering that, after all, the exiled King had had little or no complicity in the deeds which brought his father to the scaffold. England was tired of Puritanism, and was preparing with all eagerness to welcome the Merry Monarch.
France, which had shown herself decidedly tepid in helping the King of England in his adversities, and had, even at the nod of the usurper, driven him beyond her borders, was quite ready to rejoice at his good luck. Even Mazarin offered the most gratifying sympathy, while Queen Anne and the common people manifested a more real gladness. The English colony in Paris was naturally almost beside itself with joy and triumph, which burst forth in noisy rejoicings, wherein music, drinking, and fireworks played about equal parts.
As for Henrietta, her joy was too deep for words. The small but pretty house at Colombes, where she now spent much of her time, was the scene of suitable festivity, but she was probably glad when she could retire to Chaillot to receive the sympathy of Mother de la Fayette, and to assist at a solemn Te Deum of thanksgiving, which was sung in the chapel of the convent. When the news came that her son, on his landing in England, had almost been torn to pieces in the delight of his subjects, her joy was complete. "At last," she wrote in a happy letter to her sister Christine, "at last the good God has looked upon us in His mercy, and has worked, so to speak, a miracle in this re-establishment, having in an instant changed the hearts of a people which has passed from the greatest hatred to expressions of the greatest possible kindness and submission, marked, moreover, by expressions of unparalleled joy."[421] The King, her son, she added, would, she believed, be more powerful than any of his predecessors, a forecast in which she showed her usual lack of political penetration, for the English people, even in the delirium of loyalty of the Restoration, did not throw away the fruits of the long struggle.
Charles wrote most kindly to his mother, begging her to come to England to share his triumph, and she confessed, in a letter to her sister Christine, that she should like before she died to see her family reunited after their long wanderings, and "vagabonds no more." But she delayed several months, during the course of which her nephew, Louis XIV, whom she had once hoped to see her son-in-law, married the bride of his mother's choosing, the Infanta of Spain. The Queen of England, in company with her sister of France, repaired to the house of Madame de Beauvais,[422] whence, from a balcony overlooking the Rue S. Antoine, the royal ladies witnessed the entry into Paris of the King of France and his wife, Louis riding on horseback, and the bride sitting in a car drawn by six splendid horses. Only a few weeks after this day of rejoicing Henrietta's joy was turned to grief, and even her pleasure in her son's restoration was dashed by the sad news of the death of her youngest son Henry, who had grown into a tall, fine young man, whose gallant bearing was much admired when he rode into London at the left hand of his brother the King, on the happy 29th of May. The poor lad was smitten by the scourge of smallpox, and in a few days he was laid in the grave.
It was not until October that the Queen turned her steps towards England, accompanied by her youngest daughter, who was now a girl of sixteen, the beautiful
"Princesse blanche comme albàtre,"[423]
who was soon to be the bride of her cousin Philip, the brother of Louis XIV. In spite of the happy occasion, it was sad to Henrietta to retrace the wedding journey of her youth, and to have to take part in festivities which recalled those of that long-passed time. On this occasion she set sail from Calais, but it was again at Dover that she set foot upon the soil of her adopted country, which she had not seen for sixteen years, and which her daughter had left as a child too young for memory.