lio Ursino, Don Juan de Medicis,
the Duc de Bellegarde, Joannini, Concini, Leonora, Trainel, Vinti,
Caterina Selvaggio,[168] Gondy, and more frequently still, of Madame de
Verneuil;[169] a circumstance which was quite sufficient to dispel all
mystery, as it at once became evident to those who mentally combined
these significant names, that the royal quarrel was a recriminatory one,
and that while the Queen was indulging in invectives against the
Marquise, and her champion M. le Grand, the King retorted by reproaching
her with the insolence of her Italian favourites, and her own weak
submission to their thrall.[170]

Capefigue, in his history, has shown less desire than Sully to envelop
this royal quarrel in mystery; and plainly asserts, although without
quoting his authority for such a declaration, that after mutual
reproaches had passed between Henry and his wife, the Queen became so
enraged that she sprang out of bed, and throwing herself upon the
monarch, severely scratched him in the face; a violence which he
immediately repaid with interest, and which induced him to summon the
minister to the palace, whose first care was to prevail upon the King to
retire to another apartment.[171]

Marie, exasperated by the persevering infidelity of her husband,
considered herself, with some reason, as the aggrieved party: she had
given a Dauphin to France; her fair fame was untainted; and she
persisted in enforcing her right to retain and protect her Tuscan
attendants. Henry, on his part, was equally unyielding; and it was, as
we have already shown, several hours before the bewildered minister of
finance could succeed in restoring even a semblance of peace. To every
argument which he advanced the Queen replied by enumerating the
libertine adventures of her husband (with the whole of which she proved
herself to be unhappily only too familiar), and by declaring that she
would one day take ample vengeance on his mistresses; strong in the
conviction that to whatever acts of violence she might be induced by the
insults heaped upon her, no rightly thinking person would be found to
condemn so just a revenge.[172]

This declaration, let Sully modify it as he might, could but aggravate
the anger of the King; and accordingly, he replied by a threat of
banishing his wife to one of his distant palaces, and even of sending
her back to Florence, with the whole of her foreign attendants.

From this project, if he really ever seriously enter