"Mais que fais je par ces carmes Vous arrestant en ces lieux C'est que je suis pris aux charmes Que vous avez dans les yeux.
"Allez, j'ay peur que vous-mesme Nous emportiez votre coeur; Vous portez un diademe Soubs un front toujours vainquer.
"Ne demeurez, ie vieux suyvre Mon coeur ne sera rétif, C'est glorieusement vivre Que d'estre en vos mains captif."[24]
Henrietta looked and smiled and listened. She was new to such honours, and it was pleasant to be for the moment a greater person than her stern mother or her stately sister-in-law. But the rejoicings were long-drawn-out, and she must have been very weary before they culminated in a joyous Te Deum sung in the cathedral, which, like Notre-Dame in Paris, had been disfigured as much as possible with pictures and hangings. Nor even then were her toils over. Long and dreary speeches awaited her, to which she had to listen with some show of interest, before at last she could lie down to rest.
Henrietta's innocent dreams were perhaps of Jason and the goddesses of the sea; but there were those about her whose pillows were haunted by visions of a very different character.
Had all France been searched through it would have been difficult to find a more undesirable friend and adviser for a young married woman than Marie de Rohan, once Duchess of Luynes, and now by her second marriage Duchess of Chevreuse. Beautiful, unscrupulous, and gifted with a remarkable talent for diplomacy, which enabled her to give effect to her audacious schemes, she had little difficulty in recommending herself to Henrietta, into whose young mind she dropped seeds of distrust and of a love of crooked ways which were to bear fruit in the future. It was not her fault if other seeds failed to ripen there, and if the purity of the little bride's mind was proof against the evil example of certain events which occurred during the few days of the halt at Amiens.
The city had no house large enough to accommodate the three Queens. The Queen-Mother, as befitted her age and dignity, was lodged in the episcopal palace, while Henrietta and her sister-in-law had to find apartments elsewhere. The bride's domicile is not known, but to Queen Anne and her attendants was allotted a fine house with gardens sloping down to the River Somme. In these gardens took place a famous scene destined to influence several lives, and among them that of Henrietta Maria.
Already at a ball given by the Duchess of Chaulnes the animation and brilliant looks of the Queen of France had been remarked, and ill-natured people were not lacking who saw in the English duke, who had danced on that evening with infinite grace, the magician able to rouse her from the listlessness which usually spoiled her undoubted beauty. Such public meetings were safe enough, but Buckingham was constantly at the Queen's lodgings. One evening, in company with Madame de Chevreuse and the Earl of Holland, he was paying his respects when Anne, who, remembering the soft, scented nights of her native land, loved to wander abroad after dusk, invited him to enjoy with her the cool beauty of the June twilight. Their companions, who were carrying on their own flirtation under the cloak of another's, followed, but, perhaps intentionally, they lagged behind, so that the royal lady found herself alone with her bold admirer in a dark, winding walk. Suddenly the silence of the evening was broken by a shrill cry. The Queen's equerry, who was in attendance at a discreet distance, rushed up to find his mistress in a state of trembling agitation, and the duke so red and confused that he was glad to make his escape as quickly as possible. There were, of course, explanations and excuses. The matter came to the ears of the Queen-Mother, who, worn out by her exertions, was lying seriously ill; she helped to hush up the scandal, and both Anne and Buckingham seemed, for the moment, to escape easily; but it was felt that they must part at once, and the duke, with a tact which he sometimes displayed, began to talk of the King of England's impatience to see his bride, and to hint that it was not necessary to wait for the Queen-Mother's recovery.
Henrietta, the sport of others less innocent than herself, knelt to receive her mother's last blessing. That lady, touched by some real maternal feeling, bade her a tender farewell, pressing into her hand a letter which the girl found, when she came to read it, to be full of the most admirable sentiments of piety and virtue and of excellent advice as to her conduct in the married state. She probably knew Mary de' Medici too well to attribute this composition to her, and perhaps no one attempted to disguise the fact that its author was the pious Father Bérulle who was going with her to England in the capacity of confessor.[25]