The kingdom was at peace, but anarchy still reigned within the walls of the palace. It is true that the advancing age of the monarch appeared to offer a sufficient guarantee for his moral reformation, but the daily experience of the Queen sufficed to convince her that she must never hope for domestic happiness; and this conviction doubtless tended to place her more thoroughly in the power of those treacherous advisers who, in order to strengthen their own influence, did not hesitate to exaggerate (where exaggeration was possible) the painful errors of her husband. She saw herself idolized by the people, who regarded her with earnest affection as the mother of two Princes whom they looked upon as pledges for the safety and prosperity of France, while she found herself at the same time an object of indifference to the monarch whom they were destined to succeed; and who, while he lavished upon his children incessant tokens of tenderness, sacrificed her personal happiness to every passing fancy, even at the time when he affected to reproach her with a coldness of which he was himself the cause.
Again we fearlessly repeat that the historians of the time have not done Marie de Medicis justice. They expatiate upon her faults, they enlarge upon her weaknesses, they descant upon her errors; but they touch lightly and carelessly upon the primary influences which governed her after-life. She arrived in her new kingdom young, hopeful, and happy--young, and her youth was blighted by neglect; hopeful, and her hopes were crushed by unkindness; happy, and her happiness was marred by inconstancy and insult. Her woman-nature, plastic as it might have been under more fortunate circumstances, became indurated to harshness; and it is not they who strive to work upon the most solid marble who should complain if the chisel with which they pursue their purpose become blunted in the process.
On the 5th of September of this year died M. de Bellièvre, the Chancellor of France, whose probity and justice had rendered him dear to the people, in whose eyes the withdrawal of his Court favour only tended to enhance his valuable qualities. He was, as a natural consequence, succeeded by Brulart de Sillery, who had already superseded him as Keeper of the Seals; and his body was attended to the church of St. Germain-l'Auxerrois by a vast concourse of the citizens.
His demise was, in November, followed by that of the Cardinal de Lorraine,[371] who, with the usual superstition of the age, was declared to have been bewitched because his malady had baffled the skill of his physicians; while that which renders the circumstance the more melancholy, is the fact that the individual accused of his destruction was burned alive at Nancy, after having been previously subjected to a course of lingering torture.[372]
The Court meanwhile, according to Sully,[373] was more dissipated than it had been during any previous winter since the arrival of Marie de Medicis in France; while the account given of the state of morals throughout the capital by L'Etoile, is one which will not bear transcription. The new year (1608) commenced in the same manner. Ballets were danced both at the Louvre and at the residences of the great nobles. The ex-Queen Marguerite gave an entertainment in honour of the birth of the young Prince, which terminated with a running at the ring, where the prizes were distributed by herself and her successor; and, finally, the King commanded that an especial ballet for the amusement of the Duc de Montpensier, to whose daughter he was about to affiance the infant Duc d'Orléans, should be executed by the Duc de Vendôme, the Marquis de Bassompierre, the Baron de Thermes, and M. de Carmail, the four nobles of the Court who were distinguished by the appellation of "les Dangereux." The august party accordingly proceeded to the hotel of that Prince, who was then nearly at the point of death, having languished throughout two years in a low decline which had gradually sapped his existence; but notwithstanding the state of debility to which he was reduced, the Duke left his bed, and received his royal and noble guests in the hall wherein the ballet was performed.[374] It may be doubted, however, whether M. de Montpensier did not make this supreme effort in consequence of the proposed alliance, and his anxiety to evince to their Majesties his sense of the honour which was about to be conferred upon himself and his family, rather than from any amusement which he could hope to derive from such an exhibition. Be that, however, as it may, the most magnificent preparations had been made for the reception of Henry and his Queen, who were met at the foot of the great staircase by the Duchess, followed by her women, and escorted by a score of pages bearing lighted tapers, and thus conducted to the canopied dais beneath which their ponderous chairs, covered with cloth of gold, had been placed, with low stools behind and on either side of the throne, for the use of such of the other guests as were privileged to seat themselves in the presence of the sovereign.
The ballet, save as regarded the dying condition of the ducal host, was executed under the happiest auspices. The King, to whom the proposed marriage of the two children was agreeable under every aspect, was in one of his most condescending and complacent moods; while Marie de Medicis, whose affection for all her offspring amounted to passion, was radiant with delight as she remembered that by the will of the Duke all his property and estates devolved upon the young Prince, even should his betrothed bride[375] not live to become his wife.[376]
On the following day the affiancing, of which this entertainment had been the prelude, took place with great solemnity. The most costly presents were exchanged, not only by the betrothed children, but also by their royal and noble relatives. This ceremony, owing to the failing health of the Duke, was also performed at the Hôtel Montpensier, and was succeeded by amusements of every description; among which those prepared for the occasion at the Arsenal by Sully afforded the most marked gratification to their Majesties. The minister had caused a spacious theatre to be constructed, in which the Italian actors who had been summoned to France by the Queen gave their representations. This pit or salle de spectacle was, as he himself informs us, arranged amphitheatrically, while above were galleries divided into separate boxes, each approached by a different staircase and entered by a different door. Two of these galleries were reserved entirely for the ladies who were admitted to the performance, and no man, upon any pretext whatever, was permitted to enter them; an arrangement which appears to be strikingly at variance with the lax morality of the time. So resolved, nevertheless, was Sully to enforce this restriction, that he adds with a gravity curious enough upon such a subject: "This was one of my regulations which I would not suffer to be violated, and of which I did not consider it beneath me personally to compel the observance." [377]
To impress, moreover, upon his readers the strength of this determination, he relates an anecdote of which we cannot resist the transcription: