And now Buckingham was, for the second time, in the great centre of all civilization. Paris was probably unchanged; but few persons who had known the Court of France in the days of the great Henry could have recognized it during the weak rule of his successor. Henry IV., adding another instance in corroboration of the remark, that during five hundred years not one of the French monarchs had attained the age of sixty, had now been dead twelve years.[[412]] To that manly and powerful monarch, bred up in the house of a peasant, his iron nerves braced by hazards almost incredible; his courage proved in battles a hundred and twenty-five in number; his hardihood so great that for two years he was never seen unbooted; being perpetually in the exercise of war and hunting—to this hero, as prudent and sagacious as he was brave, had succeeded a dull and heavy boy, slow in speech, yet quick to avenge, on any of his young companions, petty or imagined slights. Timid and even dastardly by nature, the early pusillanimity of Louis the Thirteenth had attracted the notice of his father. “Faut-il donc que je sois père d’un poltron!” was the involuntary exclamation of Henry of Navarre. Such was, however, his successor, who had, in truth, far more of his mother’s disposition than of his father’s frank and princely nature. He had the Medicean fierceness and imperiousness of character, coupled with an abject spirit, which was fostered, whilst cramped, by the potent dominion of his mother over his mind.[[413]]

Marie de Medici, the queen-mother, had obtained the highest reputation for sanctity, charity, and prudence. Of her beauty, those charms which could rival the attractions of the famed Gabrielle d’Estrées, the chroniclers of the day speak loudly. In the affections of her royal husband she had, however, suffered, not so much from the influence of her rival’s comeliness, as from the wit and vivacity of Gabrielle’s conversation. Like her son, Marie de Medici was slow in speech, and the French accounted her dull and uninteresting; but, for the “main grounds of attending to her profit or her power,” she was, writes an eye-witness of her career for four years,[[414]] “provident enough, and her commanding and high spirit, caused her to be obeyed in all in which she was permitted to meddle.”[[415]] And the event justified this opinion. Her daughter-in-law, Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip the Third of Spain, had been several years the wife of Louis the Thirteenth, when Charles and Buckingham saw her in all the perfection of her youthful loveliness at Paris. Born in the year 1602, Anne must have been at this time in her twenty-second year. She is described as having been, at the age of fifteen, when (having been married the year previously by proxy) she was first introduced to her royal consort, singularly attractive. An ancient lady of the court drew a lively picture of her appearance to Madame de Motteville. “The first time that she saw the Queen,” said that chronicler of other days, “she was seated upon cushions, after the Spanish fashion, surrounded by a number of ladies; she was dressed in green satin, embroidered with gold and silver; her sleeves hanging, but caught up on the arm with immense diamonds, serving as buttons. She had on a close ruff; and on her head a small hat, of the same colour as her gown, from which hung a plume of Heron’s feathers, adding, by their dark hue, to the beauty of her hair, which was extremely light, and frizzed in large curls.”[[416]] Such, in early youth, was the appearance of that Princess whose attractions proved eventually a source of peril and discredit to Buckingham. Her portraits give us no idea of a beauty so commanding as that which is implied by the extraordinary influence of her attractions; but it is probable that, like that of most Spanish women, it faded prematurely, and that her great charm consisted in the gaiety of her temper; in her sweetness and generosity of character; and in a certain sentimental turn of gallantry, which she conceived not to be incompatible with female virtue. At the period of Charles’s first visit to Paris, Marie de Medici still ruled paramount over the weak character of her son. It had been her aim, even before the death of Henry the Fourth, to win the cold affections of her only offspring, as well as those of the son of her rival, the Marquis de Verneuil, to herself. At the time when Anne of Austria, a child, gave her hand to Louis, a child also—for their ages tallied—there was an evident disposition on the part of the former to attach herself to the partner to whom the decree of state policy had joined her compulsorily. She felt no disgust at his appearance, for, though greatly inferior to the Duc de Vendome and the Marquis de Verneuil in manly beauty, the young King was tall and well-formed; and the darkness of his countenance was no disparagement in the eyes of a Princess who had been accustomed to the rich tint of Moorish and Spanish complexions.[[417]] Upon the death of the Duc de Luisnes, the favourite of Louis, in 1621, Marie de Medici was left with no other rival in her maternal influence over her son, than his young wife. By a fatality such as too often attends royal marriages, it was henceforth decreed that the young couple were not to love each other. Anne, it appears plainly from her own confession, might have done so, had she been left to herself;[[418]] and the young King, it was also alleged, admired the beauty of his wife and respected her amiable qualities; but it was not the policy of Marie de Medici, nor afterwards that of Cardinal de Richelieu, that these natural affections should have their course. The King was known to avow to a confidant, that whilst he was attracted to his wife, he dared not avow it either to his mother or to Richelieu, whose counsels and services, he added, were of far more importance to him than the affection of his wife.[[419]]

Such was the state of domestic affairs at the court of Louis, when the Prince and Buckingham beheld, for the first time, those who were destined to awaken in the one an honourable and enduring attachment, in the other a mad and criminal passion.

They still maintained their disguise, nor was it difficult, for, as Sir Henry Wotton observes, “the impossibility to conceive so great a Prince and favourite suddenly metamorphosed into travellers, with no greater train, was enough to make any man living unbelieve his five senses.” In order to add to their disguise, Buckingham bought periwigs, to overshadow their foreheads; and thus provided, they spent a day in viewing the city and the court, which Buckingham had visited before, when in training for his courtier destiny, but which to Charles was an object of novel and peculiar interest, France being “neighbour to his future estates.”[[420]]

Fortune favoured their curiosity. From a gallery in the royal palace, they were so favoured as to see the King, solacing himself with familiar pleasures; the queen-mother, at her own table; nor were they discovered even by Monsieur de Cadenat, who had so lately visited England as ambassador, and who must well have known their features. Towards the evening, by an apparent chance, though, as Sir Henry Wotton observes, “underlined with a Providence,” the travellers had a full view of the young queen, and of Henrietta Maria, the future queen of England. These princesses were, with the ladies of the Court, practising a dance and masque, but the diversion appears to have been held in private. The travellers, however, hearing two gentlemen talk of going to witness it, pressed in after them, and were admitted by the Duc de Montbazon, the Queen’s Chamberlain, from courtesy to strangers, when, at the same time, many of the French, who wished to be spectators, were rejected. “Note here,” observes Wotton, “even with the point of a diamond, by what oblique steps and imaginable preparatives the High Disposer of princes’ affections doth sometimes conceive the secrets of his will.” It was afterwards found that the young face which Vandyck has so often depicted on his canvas, surrounded as it was by maturer beauties, made an impression upon the imagination of Charles which only required certain circumstances to be heightened into love.[[421]]

Anne of Austria, nevertheless, bore away the palm in the eyes of Buckingham, and even of his princely charge. Whilst they remained at Paris, the King wrote to them to the following effect:—

“Sweett boyes: the newes of youre going is allreaddie so blowin abroade as I am forced for youre safetie to poste this bearare after you who will give you his best advyce and attendance in youre journey. God blesse youe both, my sweete babes, and sende you a safe and happye returne.

“James.”[[422]]

On their part, the travellers thus wrote:—

“Sir,