and even occasionally alluded
to her with a contempt which stung her haughty and presumptuous spirit
beyond endurance. She saw her little Court melting away, her flatterers
dispersing, and her friends becoming estranged; nor could she conceal
from herself that if she failed shortly to discover some method of
estranging Henry from the Queen, and once more asserting her own
influence, all her greatness would be scattered to the winds. Her vanity
was also as deeply involved as her ambition, for she had hitherto
believed her power over the affections of the King to be so entire that
he could not liberate himself from her thrall; yet now, in the zenith of
her beauty, in the pride of her intellect, and in the very climax of her
favour, she found herself suddenly abandoned, as if the effort had not
cost a single struggle to her royal lover.

Marie de Medicis, meanwhile, was happy. She cared not to look back upon
the past; she sought not to look forward into the future; to her the
present was all in all, and she began to encourage bright dreams of
domestic bliss, by which she had never before been visited since the
first brief month of her marriage. So greatly indeed did her new-born
happiness embellish the exulting Queen, that it was at this period that
the profligate monarch declared to several of his confidential friends,
that had she not been his wife, his greatest desire would have been to
possess her as a mistress.[223] The whole of her little Court felt the
influence of her delight; she lavished on all sides the most costly
gifts; she surrounded the King with amusements of every description, and
day after day the heart of the irritated favourite was embittered by the
reports which reached her of the unprecedented gaiety and splendour of
the Queen's private circle.

As the dissension which had arisen between Sully and the Comte de
Soissons rather increased in intensity than yielded to the royal
expostulation, Henry resolved to give a public proof of his continued
regard for the minister; and for this purpose he caused him to be
informed that on his way to Normandy (whither he was about to proceed in
order to investigate the truth of certain rumours which had reached him
of a meditated insurrection in that province) he would pass by Rosny,
and should claim his hospitality for one day with his whole Court. As
the King was on the eve of his departure, Sully at once left the
capital, and by travelling with great speed, he re