Now that there was once more a court in Paris, it was visited by all kinds of distinguished people, and on these occasions Henriette was always present. But of all the guests that came to the Louvre, none was so strange as Christina, queen of Sweden, daughter of the great Gustavus Adolphus. Christina was very clever, and could read Greek, Latin and Hebrew, as well as several other languages, but she dressed as much like a man as she was able, and hated ceremonies and rules of courts. She was received by the duke of Guise when she entered France, and very much surprised was he at the curious sight she presented. 'The queen wore,' he writes, 'a man's wig, very high in the front and full at the sides, but the back of her head was dressed with some resemblance to a woman.' Her bodice was always laced crooked, and her skirt hung to one side, and was half open, showing her underclothes. 'She uses a great deal of pomade and powder; never puts on gloves, and her shoes exactly resemble those of a man.' Yet the queen, who had recently abdicated her throne in favour of her cousin and her liberty, was only now a little past thirty and not bad looking. But her untidiness seems to have struck everybody, for a little later madame de Motteville speaks of a visit she paid the king and his mother at Compiègne, when she arrived with her wig uncurled and blown about by the wind, looking for all the world like a crazy gipsy. In spite of her odd appearance and ways, however, she was very popular with the French people; but we are not told what King Louis thought about her, and no doubt Henriette's sharp eyes saw many a funny scene, when the royal politeness of both Louis and Christina was severely taxed. Happily for her during that year the widowed princess of Orange was paying her mother a long visit, so that the girl had someone to laugh with. Everybody was charmed with the princess royal, and she on her part was enchanted to get away from her stiff Dutch court, and enjoy herself with the young sister whom she had never seen. Balls were given in her honour, to all of which she took Henriette; and very unwillingly she herself was obliged to play the part of a spectator, as her aunt, queen Anne, had forbidden all widows to dance in public. However, there were plenty of private fêtes, and here she could dance as much as she liked—and that was a great deal! Then plays were given at the Louvre for her amusement, and the young king wrote and acted a ballet on Cupid and Psyche, which everyone said was 'wonderful,' though perhaps nobody thought it quite so 'wonderful' as the king himself. 'I have scarcely time to snatch a piece of bread,' the princess of Orange exclaims happily, and even Mademoiselle has a good word for her cousin and for the jewels which she wore. It was a great holiday for princess Mary, but she did not suffer all the pleasure and admiration to spoil her or turn her head. We find her still thinking of how she can help her brothers, and making time to mourn her husband and to keep the day of his death sacred, though it was several years since his death. On Sundays she never missed going to the service at the English ambassador's, though her mother would fain have had her company in her visits to the convent of the Carmelites. Thus the year passed away till the illness of the little prince of Orange, afterwards William III., obliged her to return to the Hague.
Henriette spent a dull time during the next two years, and her life seemed more dismal after the gay time of her sister's visit. Her mother grew more and more ill, and lived chiefly at Colombes or Chaillot. Every now and then, however, queen Anne begged leave for Henriette to come to a ball at the Louvre, or to a specially brilliant fête such as that given by Séguier, where Mademoiselle, with her accustomed rudeness, tried to take precedence of Henriette, which the queen of France would by no means allow. During the spring of 1658 cardinal Mazarin invited the royal families of France and England, Monsieur, the king's uncle, and his daughter Mademoiselle to be present at a supper and small dance held in his private apartments. As it was Lent, of course nothing but fish was eaten, but never had so many sorts of fish been seen before, cooked in so many different ways. After supper, and while the remainder of the guests were dancing, the two queens, Henriette and Mademoiselle, were conducted into a long gallery, filled with all kinds of beautiful things—jewels, china, furniture, rich stuffs of gold and silver, plate, gloves, fans, scent-bottles and a thousand other objects—for the cardinal's collection was famous throughout Europe.
'Here, Madame,' said Mazarin, bowing low before the queen, 'are the prizes for a lottery in which no one will draw blanks.' Mademoiselle drew a big diamond, but the first prize of all was a diamond bigger still, worth four thousand crowns, and this was won by a lieutenant in the King's Guards, called La Salle.
It was towards the close of 1659 that the marriage of the king with his cousin Marie Thérèse, daughter of the king of Spain, was decided upon. In the country house of Colombes on the Seine tales of the preparations floated to the ears of Henriette, who would have enjoyed nothing so much as being in Paris in the midst of all the talk. In her secret heart she longed to go south with the royal cavalcade; and gladly would her aunt have taken her, but queen Henrietta was ill and out of spirits, and greatly agitated by the news from England, where, Cromwell being dead, parties were divided as to the prospects of the accession of Charles II. She needed her daughter, and Henriette, though she loved amusement, was very tender-hearted and did not let her mother guess how great was her disappointment. The princess was now passed fifteen, and was looked on by the French people as their adopted child. She was taller than anyone had expected her to become, and had the long face of the Stuarts. Her hair was a bright brown, her skin was fair, and her eyes, unlike her mother's, were blue, while her hands and arms were famous for their beauty. Many women were more beautiful than she, but none had her charm, or could, like her, point a jest which left no sting behind it. Her aunt saw with pleasure that the eyes of her younger son frequently rested on her niece, whom a short time before he had been tempted to despise, following in this the example of the king. If this marriage could be, as well as the other—ah, how happy it would make her! To Anne of Austria it mattered little that the princess was an exile and entirely dependent on France for the bread she ate and the clothes she wore. Such trifles might be of consequence to the duke of Savoy and the grand duke of Tuscany, both of whom had hastily rejected the timid proposals put forth by the English queen, but the duke of Anjou (soon, by the death of his uncle, to become 'Monsieur' and duke of Orléans) was rich enough and distinguished enough to take a bride without a dowry. So the queen-mother set forth on the journey southwards which was to end in that other wedding, and before that was celebrated Charles II. had been called to his father's throne and his sister was a match for any king.
'My head is stunned with the acclamations of the people,' writes Charles from Canterbury on May 26 to his 'deare, deare sister,' and amidst all the 'vast amount of business' attending the Restoration he found time to remember her love of riding, and to send her a saddle of green velvet, with trimmings of gold and silver lace. Even queen Henrietta forgot his illness and her troubles for a moment. She was no longer La Reine Malheureuse, but the mother of a reigning king, and when Monsieur came galloping up to Colombes immediately after the royal couple had returned to Fontainebleau, Henrietta received him with open arms as her future son. Queen Anne was no less delighted than her sister-in-law, and herself came to Colombes in state to carry both mother and daughter to Fontainebleau in one of those old painted and gilded glass coaches that contained nine or ten people. Here they paid their respects to the bridal pair, who received them with great kindness. The young queen was a good-natured girl, with pretty fair hair and pink and white face, but stupid and ignorant, and never likely to be a rival to Henriette. Still they soon made friends, and then the princess drove home with her mother, both of them much pleased with their visit. After a ball given by Monsieur at his palace of St. Cloud, and other fêtes at which Henriette was almost as much stared at as Marie Thérèse, came the state entry of the king and queen into Paris, and the queen-mother (as Anne of Austria was now called) invited Henrietta Maria and her daughter to her balcony near a wonderful triumphal arch in the Rue Saint Antoine. It was August 26 and a beautiful day, and the narrow streets, as well as the windows and even roofs of the houses, were thronged to overflowing. The young queen sat alone in her glass coach, wearing a black dress heavily embroidered in gold and silver and covered with precious stones, which suited her fair complexion and pale golden hair. The king, also in gold and silver and mounted on a magnificent black horse, rode on the right of the coach, followed by his cousins, the Princess of the Blood, and the highest nobles in France, while on the left was Monsieur, gay and gallant on a white charger, diamonds blazing on his coat and on his plumed hat.
Monsieur and the queen-mother wished that his marriage should take place at once, but Henrietta Maria would not hear of this, and insisted that it should be put off till she and her daughter had paid a visit to England, where, after sixteen years of exile, the family were at last to meet. But no sooner had they started than the news arrived that the young duke of Gloucester had died of smallpox after a few days' illness, and all their joy was damped. Henriette, indeed, amidst all the excitements around her, was more quickly consoled than either her mother or the princess royal, and the feelings of the queen were tinged with remorse, as she remembered her last parting with the boy. The short period of mourning over, the court festivities began, and Charles was besieged by envoys asking for the hand of his sister, for her engagement to Monsieur had not yet been publicly announced. Among the petitioners was the emperor Leopold I., whom Mademoiselle intended for herself, and great was her wrath when the fact came to her ears. Charles, however, was quite satisfied with the marriage that had been arranged, and contented himself with prevailing on Parliament to settle a handsome sum on Henriette; which it was quite willing to do, as she had managed to charm both the Lords and the Commons, as well as everybody else. Great preparations were made for keeping Christmas in the good old fashion, which had been set aside for so many years. Everything was to be done according to the old rules, and a branch of the flowering thorn at Glastonbury was brought up by relays of horsemen for presentation to the king on Christmas Eve. But once again death stepped in, and turned their joy into grief, for the princess royal fell ill of small-pox, and died in a few days, at the age of twenty-nine. The queen, in an agony of terror for her one remaining daughter, removed Henriette from Whitehall to St. James's, where she received a letter from Monsieur, imploring them to set out at once for France. This they did, but Henriette was seized on board ship with an attack of measles, and the vessel was forced to put back into Portsmouth. Much anxiety was felt throughout both kingdoms as to the recovery of the princess, but at the end of a fortnight the doctors declared her well enough to travel. The risk was great, for it was January, and the slightest cold might have gone to her lungs; however, mercifully she took no harm, and her mother gave a sigh of relief when they landed on French soil at Havre. Once in France it seemed as if no one could show them enough kindness. The king and queen, accompanied by Monsieur, came out from Paris to greet them, and on their entry next day the air was filled with the shouts of welcome given by the people. Everybody wished that the marriage should take place at once, but as Lent was close at hand the Pope's consent had to be obtained. This was always a long affair, and in the meantime cardinal Mazarin died, and, by order of the king, court mourning was worn for a fortnight, so that it was March 30 before the ceremony of betrothal was performed in the Palais Royal, by the grand almoner, monseigneur Daniel de Cosnac, bishop of Valence. Though the guests were few, consisting only of the nearest relations of the king of France, with the English ambassadors, they were beautifully dressed, and wore all their jewels. Next morning, at twelve o'clock the bishop read the marriage service in the queen of England's private chapel, in the presence of Louis XIV., Anne of Austria, and Henrietta Maria.