Wicked as were her counsels, he would have followed them and willingly, could he have seen his way clear to success. Men still talk of his kindly nature—in face of the fact, proved by irresistible evidence, that he rejoiced at the massacre of the Protestants in Ireland, to say naught of many other instances of inhumanity brought home to this so-called “Martyr King.” He may not have been—was not—either a Nero or a Theebaw; and with his favourites and familiars no doubt behaved amicably enough; at the same time readily sacrificing them when danger threatened himself. To his wife his fidelity and devotion were such as to have earned for him the epithet “uxorious,” a title which can be more readily conceded. But in his affection for her—whether upheld by respect or not—there was a spice of fear. He knew all about the scandals relating to her mother, Marie of France, with Richelieu, and his own and father’s favourite, the assassinated Buckingham, now sleeping in his grave. Charles more than suspected, as did all the world besides, that this same Queen-mother had sent her husband—king as himself—to an untimely tomb by a “cup of cold poison.” And oft as the dark Italian eyes of her daughter flashed upon him in anger, he felt secret fear she might some day serve him as had her mother the ill-fated monarch of France. She was of a race and a land whence such danger might be reasonably expected and dreaded. Lucrezia Borgia and Tophana were not the only great female poisoners Italy has produced.
“If you’ve no care for yourself, then,” she went on with untiring persistence, “think of our children. Think of him,” and she nodded towards a gaudily-dressed stripling of some ten or twelve, seen coming towards them. It was he who, twenty years after, under the seemingly innocent soubriquet of “Merry Monarch,” made sadness in many a family circle, smouching England’s escutcheon all over with shame, scarce equalled in the annals of France.
“Pauvre enfant!” she exclaimed, as he came up, passing her jewelled fingers through the curls of his hair; “your father would leave you bereft of your birthright; some day to be a king with a worthless crown.”
The “pauvre enfant,” a sly young wretch, smiled in return for her caresses, looking dark at his father. Young as he was, he knew what was meant, and took sides with his mother. She had already well indoctrinated him with the ideas of Divine Right, as understood by a Medici.
“Peste!” exclaimed the King, looking vexed, possibly at the allusion to a successor; “were I to follow your counsels, Madam, it might result in my leaving him no crown at all.”
“Then leave him none!” she said in quick return, and with an air of jaunty indifference. “Perhaps better so. I, his mother, would rather see him a peasant than prince, with such a future as you are laying out for him.”
“Sire, the Earl of Strafford craves audience of your Majesty.”
This was said by a youth in the official costume of the Court, who had approached from the Palace, and stood with head bent before the King.
A remarkably handsome young fellow he was, and the Queen, as she turned her eyes on him, seemed to recover sweetness of temper.
“I suppose my company will be de trop now,” she said. Then facing towards the youth, and bestowing upon him one of her syren smiles—slyly though—she added, “Here, Eustace; bring this to my boudoir,” and she handed him a large book, a portfeuille of pictures, she had been all the while carrying.