Elsewhere dismay and consternation reigned. Conway, the Secretary of State, announced their doom to the assembled French ladies, informing them that the King wished to have his wife to himself, and that he found it impossible to do so while she had so many of her own countrywomen about her. They were begged to retire to Somerset House, whence they would be sent to France. Madame S. Georges, acting as spokeswoman for the rest, said that they were the servants of the King of France, they could not leave their royal mistress without the orders of the Bishop of Mende, who was their superior. That gentleman arriving, in obedience to a hasty summons, did indeed at first assert with his usual hauteur that neither he nor any of the household would depart without the commands of their own sovereign. But he was soon made to understand, by arguments which not even his spirit could resist, that no choice was left to him. That evening saw the French at Somerset House and Henrietta desolate at Whitehall. It was probably during the few days that had to elapse before her friends were deported to France that the Queen wrote the following note to the Bishop, which vividly reflects her loneliness and sorrow:—
"M. de Mandes,
"I hide myself as much as I can in order to write to you. I am treated as a prisoner, so that I cannot speak to any one, nor have I time to write my miseries nor to complain. Only, in the name of God, have pity on a poor prisoner in despair, and do something to relieve my sorrow. I am the most afflicted creature in the world. Speak to the Queen my mother about my miseries, and tell her my troubles. I say good-bye to you and to all my poor officers, and I charge my friend S. Georges, the Countess, and all my women and girls, that they do not forget me, and I will never forget them, and bring some remedy to my sorrow, or I die.... Adieu, cruel adieu, which will kill me if God does not have pity on me.
"[Ask] Father Sancy to pray for me still, and tell Mamie that I shall love her always."[51]
Such a letter was not calculated to soothe the excitable Bishop of Mende, whose spirit had already been roused to fury by hearing the cries and protestations of the poor young mistress whom he was not permitted to see. But it was little he could do. His captivity at Somerset House was broken in upon by the King of England himself, who, with the unfortunate desire for explanation which was always his, was anxious to point out with his own mouth to those whom it most concerned the reasons of his action. According to the Bishop, who occupied his leisure in writing angry letters to the King of France and the Queen-Mother, Charles acknowledged that he had no personal fault to find with his wife's servants, but said that it was necessary, to content his people and for the good of his affairs, that they should be expelled. This admission, which, if it ever existed outside the mind of the Bishop, was intended as a courteous softening of unpleasant truths, did not prevent the King from adding a command (which was obeyed) that all the French were to be gone within four-and-twenty hours.[52] It was perhaps some solace to them that before their departure a considerable sum of money and costly jewels were distributed among them.
It remained to bring Henrietta, who was still weeping angrily in her apartments, to a state of calm more befitting the Queen of England. Charles was not cruel, and when the first flush of anger was over he could feel for his wife's grief. At first he had determined that all the French, whether lay or ecclesiastic, should go. "The Queen has been left neither confessor nor doctor, and I believe that her life and her religion are in very grave peril,"[53] wrote the Bishop. But Charles, though he was not to be moved by such innuendoes, relented in some degree. In the end one of Henrietta's ladies, Madame de Vantelet, was permitted to remain with her, and two of the priests of the Oratory were granted like indulgence; one of whom was the pious and sagacious Scotchman, Father Robert Philip, who continued the Queen's confessor until his death, years later, in the days of the exile.[54]
The French were gone, and on the whole, in spite of the Bishop's protest, quietly; but Charles and Buckingham knew well that they had to face the wrath of France for this the audacious violation of the Queen's marriage treaty. Henrietta naturally looked to her own family to right her wrongs, and she wrote piteous letters to her brother asking for his help, which show the sad condition to which sorrow and unkindness had reduced the bright Princess who had left France little more than a year earlier. "I have no hope but in you. Have pity on me.... No creature in the world can be more miserable than I."[55] Mary de' Medici could not turn a deaf ear to such appeals nor to the complaints of the exiles who were pursued into France by aspersions on their characters not calculated to soothe their feelings, such as a charge of taking bribes, which charge their royal mistress, with characteristic justice and generosity, was at pains, even in the midst of her misery, to confute.[56] The Queen-Mother's remonstrances to her son-in-law were, indeed, quite unavailing, but they were dignified and expressed a surprise at his conduct which probably she did not feel, since, as the English took care to point out, it was not long since similar measure had been meted out to the Spanish attendants of Queen Anne. With her daughter she felt the warmest sympathy. "If your grief could be assuaged by that which I feel at the news of the expulsion of your servants and of the ill-treatment to which you are subjected, it would soon be diminished,"[57] she wrote, and she added, perhaps sincerely, that never had she felt such grief since the assassination of her husband, Henrietta's father. As for her son, his indignation was such that he would leave nothing undone that might procure for his sister redress and contentment. It is probable that Richelieu, with the Bishop of Mende at his elbow, shared these sentiments. Nevertheless, Carlisle was right. France had too much on her hands to pick a quarrel with England, even though her daughter had been insulted and her authority set at naught. All that could be done was to send another embassy, and this, it seems, was only decided upon at the instance of the Pope.
Two persons were joined in the embassy, the Count of Tillières, whom the English were believed greatly to fear, and his brother-in-law, the Marshal de Bassompierre, an elderly diplomat of great experience, whose old-fashioned elegance of manner was already making him a little ridiculous in the eyes of younger men who despised the Italian grace of the days of Catherine de' Medici. In the end this exquisite person had to go alone, for it was intimated that the King of England would not receive his colleague; he was rather unwilling to undertake the embassy, and his dissatisfaction was not decreased by the coolness of his reception in London, which coolness, as he reminded himself, it was clearly a duty to resent as an insult to the Crown of France.
He found matters in bad case. The King was inflexible in his refusal to come to terms, and the Queen, though she was still depressed and bitterly angry with Buckingham, showed herself, since the cession which permitted her to retain Madame de Vantelet and her old nurse, more reconciled to the change. About her spiritual welfare the Ambassador expressed himself much concerned, for she was surrounded by heretics, and in place of the irreproachable ecclesiastics appointed by her brother she had been forced to receive two English priests, by name Godfrey and Potter, who belonged to a school of thought which in his eyes, and in those of the Bishop of Mende, was little less than heretical, for they had both taken the oath of allegiance, and they had both assured the Earl of Carlisle that they did not belong to the Church of Rome, but to that which was Catholic, Gallican, and "Sorbonique," an assertion which particularly enraged Bassompierre, who saw in it an insult to the French Church and nation. He was probably little more moved by the accusation brought against one of them by the Bishop of bracketing together "the three Impostors, Mahomet, Jesus Christ, and Moses."[58] Only one person showed any cordiality to the unfortunate Ambassador. Buckingham, thinking on the Queen of France in Paris, felt that he had gone too far, and decided that it would be well to conciliate Henrietta. With this purpose he came secretly, through the darkness of the night and attended only by his young friend Montagu, to wait on Bassompierre. He complained bitterly of the hatred of which he was the victim, and inquired plaintively whether M. de Mende were saying as many disagreeable things about him on the other side of the Channel as he had been wont to do in England. To the last question the polite Frenchman must have found it difficult to frame an answer at once courteous and true, but he promised to use his influence as intermediary with Henrietta, and he was so far successful that the young Queen was induced to regard the Duke, at any rate outwardly, with greater favour.
But the situation, as regarded its real objects, was foredoomed to failure. Madame S. Georges, the Bishop of Mende, and the Fathers of the Oratory had so prejudiced Charles' mind that he refused to receive Frenchmen, bishop or religious, at the Court of his Queen. There was a deadlock, and Bassompierre, who had made matters worse by his grave indiscretion in bringing as his chaplain the Queen's late confessor, Father Sancy, with all his diplomacy could do no more. He was indeed anxious to be gone. The account of his embassy in England, which he included in his memoirs, is penned in no flattering spirit towards this island, but the full irritation of his feelings can only be gathered from the private letters which, during his sojourn in London, he dispatched to the Bishop of Mende, who was with Richelieu at Pontoise, watching the course of events.