only by
her own private circle. It was at once courteous and conciliatory; and
it is probable that, had it arrived before the departure of the Duke, it
would have been acknowledged in the same spirit; but, unfortunately, the
Queen had no sooner communicated its contents to her confidential
friends than she was met by the assurance that the monarch had, on the
receipt of her missive, carried it to the Marquise, where her credulity
had excited great amusement, an assertion which was followed by other
commentaries so distasteful to her pride, that, instead of persevering
in the prudent course which she had been induced to adopt, she haughtily
informed the royal courier by whom the letter had been brought that she
should entrust him with no written reply, but should expect his Majesty
on the following day according to his own appointment.

This marked and impolitic demonstration of disrespect excited anew the
resentment of Henry, who openly expressed his indignation in the most
unmeasured terms, and that so publicly, that within a few hours Marie
was informed of every particular; and the breach which Sully had fondly
flattered himself that he was about to heal became wider and more
threatening than ever.[240]

Meanwhile the commerce of the King and the favourite was far from
affording to the former all the gratification which he had anticipated
from its renewal. The coquetry--to designate it by no harsher term--of
Madame de Verneuil irritated the jealousy of the monarch, who could not
forget that she had taunted him with his advancing age, and who saw her
unblushingly encourage the admiration and attention of such of the
courtiers as she could induce to brave his displeasure; while her lavish
expenditure and unceasing demands, alike upon his patience and his
purse, involved him in perpetual difficulties with his finance minister,
which her extravagant attempts to assume the airs and to usurp the
privileges of quasi-royalty did not tend to diminish.

The French King was, in fact, at this period, the victim of his own
vices; the sovereign of a great and powerful nation, without a home or a
hearth, a wifeless husband, and a discontented lover; tenderly attached
to all his children, and yet unable to confer a favour upon the
offspring of one mother without incurring the resentment of the other;
and while feeling himself degraded by the thrall in which he lived,
totally devoid of the moral courage necessary for his escape from