The Life of Queen Marie de Medicis. Miss Pardoe

foster-sister from Italy at the period of her marriage. On the formation of the Queen's household, Henry had, among other appointments, honoured Madame de Richelieu[139] with the post of Mistress of the Robes; but Marie de Medicis having decided on bestowing this charge upon Leonora, refused to permit the Countess to perform the duties of her office, and requested the King to transfer it to her Italian protégée. This, however, was a concession to which Henry would not consent; and while the Queen persisted in not permitting the services of Madame de Richelieu, her royal bridegroom as pertinaciously negatived the appointment of parvenue lady of honour. The high-born countess bore the affront thus offered to her with the complacent dignity befitting her proud station; but such was far from being the case with the ambitious and mortified Leonora, who had not been a week at the French Court ere she became aware that all the Italian followers of the Queen were peculiarly obnoxious both to the King and his minister; and who felt that should she fail to push her fortunes upon the instant, she might one day be compelled to leave France as poor and as powerless as she had entered it. Not contented, therefore, with urging her royal mistress to persevere in her resolution of rejecting the attendance of Madame de Richelieu, she began to speculate upon the most feasible measures to be adopted in order to secure her own succession to the coveted dignity; and after considerable reflection, she became convinced that this could only be accomplished through the assistance of the Marquise de Verneuil. Once assured of the fact, Leonora did not hesitate; but, instead of avoiding, as she had hitherto done, the advances of the favourite--who, aware of her unlimited power over the mind of the Queen, had on several occasions treated her with a courtesy by no means warranted by her position at the Court--she began to court the favour of the Marquise in as marked a manner as she had previously slighted it; and ere long the intrigue of the two favourites was brought to a successful issue. Each stood in need of the other, and a compact was accordingly entered into between them. Madame de Verneuil, whose pride was piqued by her exclusion from the royal circle, was desirous to gain at any price the countenance of Marie, and to be admitted to her private assemblies, where alone she could carry out her more extended plan of ambition; while the wily Italian, rendered only the more pertinacious by difficulty, and anxious moreover to secure a post which would at all times enable her to remain about the person of the Queen, thought no price too great, even the dishonour of her royal foster-sister, to obtain her object, and thus a mutual promise was made; the Marquise pledging herself that, in the event of the Queen recognizing her right to attend her receptions, and treating her with the courtesy and consideration due to the rank conferred upon her by the King, she would effect the appointment courted by Leonora; while the Signora Galigaï, with equal confidence, promised in her turn that she would without delay cause Madame de Verneuil to receive a summons to the Queen's presence.

      Nor did either of these ladies over-estimate the amount of her influence; for the monarch no sooner learnt that the reception of his mistress by the haughty and indignant Princess could be purchased by a mere slight to Madame la Grande Prévoste, than he consented to sanction the appointment of the Italian suivante of Marie to the post of honour; while Leonora soon succeeded by her tears and entreaties in wringing from her royal mistress a reluctant acquiescence to her request.

      Thus then, as before stated, a hollow peace was patched up between the unequal rivals; and Madame de Verneuil at length found herself in possession of a folding-seat in the Queen's reception room; while her coadjutress triumphantly took her place among the noblest ladies of the land; but scarcely had this result been accomplished, when Henry, profiting by so unhoped-for an opportunity of gratifying the vanity of the favourite, assigned to her a suite of apartments in the Louvre immediately above those of the Queen, and little, if at all, inferior to them in magnificence.

      This, however, was an affront which Marie de Medicis could not brook; and she accordingly, with her usual independence of spirit, expressed herself in no measured terms upon the subject, particularly to such of her ladies as were likely to repeat her comments to the Marquise. The latter retorted by assuming all the airs of royalty, and by assembling about her a little court, for which that of the Queen herself was frequently forsaken, especially by the monarch, who found the brilliant circle of the favourite, wherein he always met a warm and enthusiastic welcome, infinitely more to his taste than the formal etiquette and reproachful frowns by which his presence in that of his royal consort was usually signalized.

      Nor could the annoyance of the proud Florentine Princess be subject of astonishment to any rightly-constituted mind. The position was a monstrous and an unnatural one. Both the wife and the mistress were about to become mothers; and the whole Court was degraded by so unblushing an exhibition of the profligacy of the monarch. Still, however, the French ladies of the household forebore to censure their sovereign; and even sought to persuade the outraged Queen that when once she had given a Dauphin to France the favourite would be compelled to leave the palace; but Marie's Italian followers were far less scrupulous, and expressed their indignation in no measured terms. The Queen, wounded in her most sacred feelings, became gradually colder to the Marquise, who, as though she had only awaited this relapse to sting her still more deeply than she had yet done, retorted the slights which she constantly received by declaring that "the Florentine," as she insolently designated her royal mistress, was not the legal or lawful wife of the King, whose written promise, still in her possession, he was, as she asserted, bound to fulfil should she bear him a son. This surpassing assurance no sooner reached the ears of Marie de Medicis than she once more forbade Madame de Verneuil her presence; but the Marquise, strong in her impunity, merely replied by an epigram, and consoled herself for her exclusion from the Queen's private circle by assuming more state and magnificence than before, and by collecting in her saloons the prettiest women and the most reckless gamblers that the capital could produce. Thus attracted, the infatuated monarch became her constant guest; and his neglected wife, in weak health, and with an agonised heart, saw herself abandoned for a wanton who had set a price upon her virtue, and who made a glory of her shame.

      Poor Marie! whatever were her faults as a woman, they were bitterly expiated both as a wife and as a mother!

      Vain were all the efforts of the King on the one hand and those of Leonora on the other to terminate this new misunderstanding; the Queen was coldly resolute, and the Marquise insolently indifferent; nor would a reconciliation, in all probability, ever again have taken place, had not the interests of the Mistress of the Robes once more required it, when her influence over the mind of her royal foster-sister sufficed to overcome every obstacle.

      Among the numerous Florentines who composed the suite of Marie de Medicis was Concino Concini,[140] a gentleman of her household, whose extreme personal beauty had captivated the heart of Leonora; while she saw, as she believed, in his far-reaching ambition and flexile character the very elements calculated, in conjunction with her own firmer nature and higher intellect, to lead her on to the most lofty fortunes. It is probable, however, that had La Galigaï continued to attend the Queen in her original and obscure office of waiting-woman, Concini, who was of better blood than herself, and who could not, moreover, be supposed to find any attraction in the diminutive figure and sallow countenance of his countrywoman, would never have been induced to consent to such an alliance; but Leonora was now on the high road to wealth and honour, while his own position was scarcely defined; and thus ere long the consent of the Queen to their marriage was solicited by Concini himself.

      Marie, who foresaw that by this arrangement she should keep both parties in her service, and who, in the desolation of a disappointed spirit, clung each day more closely to her foreign attendants, immediately accorded the required permission; but it was far otherwise with the King, who had no sooner been informed of the projected union than he sternly forbade it, to the great indignation of his consort, who was deeply mortified by this new interference with her personal household, and saddened by the spectacle of her favourite's unaffected wretchedness. In vain did the Queen expostulate, and, urged by Leonora and her suitor, even entreat of Henry to relent; all her efforts to this effect remained fruitless; and she was at length compelled to declare to the sorrowing woman that she had no alternative save to submit to the will of the King.

      Such, however, was far from being the intention of the passionate Italian. Too unattractive to entertain any hope from her own pleadings with Henry himself, she once more turned in this new difficulty to Madame de Verneuil, who, in order to display how little she had been mortified or