Thus situated--bound to a husband of whose indifference she was by no means certain, but who, she well knew, had not the mental strength to cope with the Cardinal, and to avow any kindness for her--admired at a distance by the courtiers--passionately loved and fiercely persecuted by Richelieu, Anne must have presented a new source of interest and curiosity to Buckingham; and the course of her destiny, hard as it might seem, would give fuel to his presumption.
The dignity which Anne could assume on state occasions has been insisted upon by Madame de Motteville, when, speaking of her demeanour during the regency, she describes her then as equally fair with the fairest of the Court. A vast quantity of brown hair, powdered and frizzed, indeed, and worn in curls, set off a complexion not so delicate in colour as distinguished for the softness and smoothness of the skin. She disfigured herself, after the Spanish fashion, by wearing rouge; and one defect was striking--her nose was thick and large. Her eyes varied in colour from a perfect blue to green; and her glance was full of sweetness and expression. Her mouth was small, and her lips crimson, and the sweetest smiles played upon her countenance. The form of her face and forehead was admirable; her arms and hands were celebrated for their wonderful symmetry and for their whiteness, being, without exaggeration, white as snow. The delicacy of her habits amounted almost to monomania. “Madam,” observed Cardinal Mazarin to her, “should you incur everlasting condemnation, your punishment would be to sleep in sheets of Holland cloth.”[[211]] Her deportment in after life, during the minority of her son, Louis XIV., and her fortitude during the agonies of her last fatal illness, showed that the gentle and attractive Queen possessed a strong natural capacity, which circumstances eventually called into action.
Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu, the all-powerful minister of Louis XIII., was now in the height of his power; he reigned, in short, under the name of the King. In an unbounded, and perhaps entirely selfish ambition, and in the full fruition of their hopes, Buckingham and Richelieu may be said to have resembled each other. In the love of pomp and display, they were alike. The superb attire, the costly retinue of the English peer, were puerile attempts compared with the ordinary household of Richelieu. His magnificent palace in the Rue St. Honoré, known, during his time, under the name of the Palais Cardinal, and, since the year 1636, as the Palais Royal, recalled the glories of York House at Whitehall, in the days of Wolsey, with all the added refinements of a later period. There, in the chapel, might be seen ornaments decorated with gold, studded with diamonds. The most splendid tapestry, the most uncommon articles of virtu, pictures of rare value, busts and statues, adorned the palace in which Richelieu entertained the King and the Court in stately revels. There, on one occasion, was enacted a play, drawn from the history of the Duke of Buckingham, when all the French prelates were invited, and when the Bishop de Chartres, formerly confessor to Richelieu, arranged the seats, and finally, clad in velvet, presented himself on the stage, at the head of a train of twenty-four pages, carrying the collation which was offered to the company.
At the Palais Cardinal, Buckingham learned fresh lessons of an ostentatious display, wholly inconsistent with the condition of a subject. The Cardinal’s body-guard, assigned to him by the King, equalled in number that of his royal master; and the horse soldiers had a table appropriated to him in his hall; of these, the Cardinal had the power of appointment and dismissal. His ordinary personal attendants in his own house were composed of thirty-six pages, selected from noble families, and reared in his house under the tutorage of able masters--a system again recalling the household of Wolsey. When he travelled, the Cardinal was followed by a train consisting of his secretaries, his physicians, and his confessor; by eight carriages, with four horses each; and by eighty baggage mules. His guard escorted him, and his pages; his band, composed of musicians of the first eminence, and a numerous body of domestic servants, followed the litter in which the great Richelieu, delicate from his birth, and infirm in health, was carried; the walls of the towns through which he passed being levelled to receive this princely procession, when the gates happened to be too narrow to permit its entrance. Often, indeed, it was found necessary to widen the roads.[[212]]
But, whilst Buckingham might read in the extreme expenditure of the Cardinal a plea for his own magnificence, there was much to be learned in that palace which Richelieu, like Wolsey, afterwards bestowed on the monarch to whom he owed his wealth. There, the minister of Charles might see a systematic regulation of expense; generosity without prodigality, and almost unlimited alms-giving. Abhorring solicitation, which always defeated its own aim, absolute and irascible, the Cardinal, nevertheless, loved to benefit those who served him. No hasty words escaped from him for which he was not eager to atone; and, whilst his principle was that men are only to be maintained in their duty by severity, his nature was placable to his inferiors, although proud and unrelenting to his political enemies.
Another lesson might Buckingham derive in the crowded salons> of the Palais Cardinal--the patronage of letters. Richelieu admitted to intimacy the most eminent authors of the day; and so much did he enjoy their society, that his chief physician, Monsieur Caton, used to say to him, when prescribing for the Cardinal:--"Sir, we will do all that is in our power; but all my remedies will be useless, if you do not add to them a drachm of Boisrobert;"--Boisrobert being a writer whose works are long since forgotten, but whose powers of telling well the news of the court and city used to charm the Cardinal. In the conversation of men of letters, Richelieu found, indeed, his greatest solace; and nothing gave him greater satisfaction than a victory argument, or a success in repartée.[[213]] In the Chamber of the Palais Cardinal might be heard poets reciting their unpublished verses, or going away richly paid and praised when their productions were approved. “Une Salle de Spectacle,” as it was called, was erected by the Cardinal in his palace, and five favourite authors, Corneille, Boisrobert, Colletet, D’Estoile, and Robron, were employed to work out into a dramatic form the poetical conceptions of their patron. Neither was this great minister content with lavishing his individual bounty upon men of genius; he formed the plan of the Academy of Paris, an institution which was to give laws to literature, and the notion of which originated in a private society of distinguished men who met together to converse, and to communicate their works. In this extension of his powerful aid to letters, Richelieu found an obstacle which Buckingham was not destined to encounter. Louis XIII. hated every species of study, and despised that which he had not intellect to appreciate. Charles, on the other hand, was intelligent and inquiring. His education had been carefully attended to; and his taste for the arts introduced a degree of refinement into English society such as this country had never before beheld.
It may easily be conceived with what intense curiosity, mingled, perhaps, with a spirit of rivalry, Buckingham must have regarded his introduction to Richelieu, and how extended a notion of the power of a minister he must have received during his notable, though brief, sojourn in France.
The dignity and courtesy of Richelieu, in his ordinary deportment, might, perhaps, have supplied a hint to the haughty and uncertain Buckingham, naturally imperious and lofty. The Cardinal knew well the value of affability. He had a most flexible countenance, every expression of which he could control; and even, according to Marie de Medici, command tears at pleasure. One moment he appeared to be sinking away in extreme pain; the next found him gay, gallant, and active. His manners were most caressing to those whom he designed to win over; but to all whom he met, his reception was full of apparent kindness--his extended hand preceded words full of courtesy, and his ready smile fascinated those who approached him.
But beneath this exterior there lay the most relentless spirit of vengeance towards all whom he regarded as enemies, and the smile and the ready dissimulation were fearful to many who were conscious of having fallen under his displeasure.
Richelieu, in his morals, gave occasion to much scandal. Beneath an assiduous exercise of some of the external forms of religion, he was supposed to conceal latitudinarian principles, and his private life was stained by great irregularities. The decencies of society were, nevertheless, maintained by the Cardinal, who was sensible that nothing lowers a man so much in public esteem as to be the slave of his passions; yet, since there scarcely existed, in his time, a man of more accommodating principles than the Cardinal in public life, so there were few, it was secretly believed, who had stronger passions to curb, or to indulge, than the most reverend celibate of the Château of Rueil--that wonderful and splendid retreat, of which no traces are left to mark the alleys wherein the festive throngs delighted, nor to recall the prisons in the park, to which the all-powerful Cardinal consigned his enemies.