"I have found," wrote the enraged diplomatist in one of these epistles, "humility among the Spaniards and courtesy among the Swiss during the embassies which I have carried on there on behalf of the King, but the English have abated nothing of their natural pride and arrogance."[59]
The Bishop sent a sympathetic answer, commenting on our national character in a manner which is worth quoting, as it serves to explain the unpopularity of that fascinating person in English society.
"I am not surprised," so ran the letter, "that you have found more courtesy and satisfaction among the Spaniards and the Swiss than in the island on the shores of which the tempest has thrown you. I myself have always considered the English less reasonable than the Swiss, and at the same time less faithful, while I think they are just as vainglorious as the Spaniards, without possessing anything of their real merit."
This was not all. A report was about that the Bishop wished to return to England, and he thoughtfully seized the opportunity to set everybody's mind at rest on the subject. The English were to have no uneasiness, he was only too willing to fall in with their wishes. "They will not have much difficulty in carrying into effect the resolution which they have taken to prevent my return," he wrote, "for both parties are quite of one opinion on that matter, my humour (setting aside the interests of my mistress) being rather to fly from than to invite another sojourn in England. It would need a very definite command to induce me to live there again, while to persuade myself to remain here I have only to consult my own inclination."[60]
So Bassompierre departed, taking with him, as a slight compensation for his trouble, some English priests who had been released from prison in compliment to the King of France. And thus ended the last stage of this sordid struggle which came near to wrecking the happiness of what was to prove one of the most loving of royal marriages.
It is hard in such a matter to apportion blame. Charles cannot be acquitted of harshness and of a certain degree of subservience to Buckingham, while the act of expulsion was a flagrant breach of the faith plighted only a year before to a brother-sovereign. But it must be remembered that most of the information comes from French, and consequently hostile, sources. After all, the King of England's real fault was that, by his marriage contract, he had allowed himself to be placed in an impossible position, from which only violence could extricate him. On their own showing it is difficult to see how any self-respecting husband, let alone a great king, could have endured the Bishop of Mende, Madame S. Georges, or even Father Bérulle. They, for their part, had much to complain of, and they saw in every approximation of their mistress to English customs and ways of thought a menace, not only to the interests of France, but to the immortal soul placed in their charge. As for Henrietta herself, she can hardly be blamed. She was but a child, and it is not surprising that she followed the counsel of those whom her mother had set over her. The severest thing that can justly be said of her is that, at the age of sixteen, she had not completely learned the lesson of a wife, and, above all, of a royal wife, "to forget her own people and her father's house."
[ [29]The Mémoires inédits du Comte Leveneur de Tillières, published in 1862, are one of the principal authorities for Henrietta Maria's early married life: they are very full and vivid, but are coloured by the writer's dislike to the English, and especially to Buckingham.
[ [30]Cf. the following description of Paris in a humorous poem of the day:
"We came to Paris, on the Seyn, 'Tis wondrous faire but nothing clean, 'Tis Europes greatest Town. How strong it is, I need not tell it, For any man may easily smell it, That walkes it up and down."