Immediately on her arrival in England, Charles I. awarded to the exiled Queen a pension of a hundred pounds a day on the civil list; but her advent had, nevertheless, occurred at an inauspicious moment for the English sovereign, whose resources were crippled, and who abstained from levying subsidies upon his subjects in order not to assemble a Parliament; while he moreover dreaded that the presence of his royal mother-in-law, with her numerous train of priests, would tend to exasperate the spirit of the people, who were already greatly excited against the Roman Catholics.
Nor were these his only causes of anxiety, as many of the French malcontents who had fled their country in order to escape the enmity of Richelieu had selected London as their place of refuge, relying upon the friendship of Henriette (a circumstance which had increased the coldness that already existed between the two Courts); and these at once rallied round Marie de Medicis as their common centre. Among these illustrious emigrants the most distinguished were the Duchesse de Chevreuse and the Ducs de Soubise and de la Valette, all of whom were surrounded by a considerable number of exiles of inferior rank; and as the Queen-mother saw them gathered about her, she easily persuaded herself that their voluntary absence from France was a convincing proof of the general unpopularity of her own arch--enemy Richelieu. Her personal suite, moreover, included no less than two hundred individuals; and thus the palace of the Stuarts presented the anomalous spectacle of a French Court, where the nobles of a hostile land, and the priests of a hostile faith, held undisturbed authority, to the open dissatisfaction of the sturdy citizens of London.
Murmurs were rife on all sides; and the Queen-mother was regarded as a harbinger of misfortune. Henriette herself was obnoxious to the Puritans, but they had been to a certain degree disarmed by her gentleness of demeanour, and the prudence and policy of her conduct; she was, moreover, the wife of the sovereign, and about to become the mother of a prince; but Marie de Medicis possessed no claims on their forbearance, and they did not hesitate to attribute to her views and designs which she was too powerless to entertain.
At this period the Queen-mother was subjected to the mortification of learning that M. de Bellièvre, the ambassador-extraordinary of her son at the Court of England, had received stringent instructions to abstain from all demonstration of courtesy towards her person; and even to avoid finding himself in her presence, whenever the etiquette of his position would permit of his absenting himself from the royal circle; a command which he so scrupulously obeyed, that although, in her anxiety to enlist him in her cause, she had more than once endeavoured to address him, she had constantly failed; until Lord Holland, at her entreaty, on one occasion contrived to detain him in the great gallery at Whitehall, where Marie de Medicis entered accompanied by the King and Queen.
As the royal party passed near him, Bellièvre bowed low, without looking towards the mother of his sovereign. Escape was impossible; and he consequently remained silent and motionless.
"Monsieur l'Ambassadeur," said a well-remembered voice, "I wish to exchange a few words with you."
Charles and Henriette moved on; Lord Holland withdrew; and the Queen-mother at length found herself face to face with the French envoy, who had no alternative but to assume an attitude of profound respect, and to extricate himself from this unexpected difficulty as best he might.
Marie de Medicis was painfully agitated. Her future fate in all probability hinged upon this long-coveted interview, and some seconds elapsed before she could utter a syllable. She continued standing, although her emotion compelled her to lean for support upon a table; and Bellièvre, courtier though he was, could scarcely have looked unmoved upon the wreck of pride and power thus placed before him. Years and sorrows had furrowed the lofty brow, and dimmed the flashing eyes, of the once beautiful Tuscan Princess, but she still retained all that dignity of deportment for which she was celebrated on her arrival in her adopted country. She was a fugitive and an exile, but she was yet every inch a Queen; and her very misfortunes invested her with an interest which no true and honest heart could fail to feel.
"Sir," she said at length, "I have for some time past endeavoured by every means in my power to impress upon the Cardinal de Richelieu my earnest desire to return to France by his interposition; but all my attempts have been useless. I have received no reply."
"Madame," interposed Bellièvre, "I humbly entreat of your Majesty to permit me to explain that although I have the honour to be the representative of my sovereign at this Court, I am not authorized to appear in that character towards yourself. It is possible that your Majesty has the intention of entrusting me with some message, in which case I entreat of you to excuse me when I decline to undertake its transmission. I have express orders not to interfere in anything connected either with the person or with the concerns of your Majesty."