eonora 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 annoyed by the coldness of the Queen, and at the same time
to prove to her that where the earnest entreaties of the latter had
failed to produce any effect, her own expressed wish would suffice to
ensure success, immediately bade Leonora dry her eyes and prepare her
wedding-dress, as she would guarantee her prompt reception of the royal
consent upon one condition, and that one so easy of accomplishment that
she could not fail to fulfil it.

Marie de Medicis had been heard to declare that in the event of her
becoming the mother of a Dauphin, she would, at the earliest possible
period, dance a ballet in honour of the King, which should exceed in
magnificence every exhibition of the kind that had hitherto been
attempted; and the condition so lightly treated by the favourite was no
less than her own appearance in the royal ballet, should it indeed take
place. Even La Galigai herself was startled by so astounding a
proposition; but she soon discovered, from the resolute attitude assumed
by the Marquise, that her powerful intercession with the King was not
otherwise to be secured; and it was consequently with even le