old, and surrounding herself entirely
by French friends and attendants.

The indignation of the Queen at this proposal was beyond the reach of
all argument. She declared herself to be sufficiently unhappy separated
from her family, and neglected by her husband, without driving from her
presence, almost with ignominy, the few persons who still remained
faithful to her interests, and who sincerely sympathized in her
sufferings; and although the Duke ventured again and again to recur to
the subject, and always with the same earnestness, Marie continued to
reject his counsel as steadily as when it was first offered.[241]

The new attachment felt or feigned by the King for Mademoiselle de la
Bourdaisiere had again awakened her jealousy; and she complained with
equal reason that Henry, even while indulging in this new passion, made
no attempt to restrain the arrogance and bitterness of the forsaken
favourite. Nor was Madame de Verneuil less indignant than the Queen;
for even while affecting an extreme devotion, and surrounding herself
with ecclesiastics, who, not content with labouring to effect her
salvation, were also feeding her vanity with the most fulsome
panegyrics, she could ill brook to see herself so easily forgotten; and
once more she indulged in such indecent liberties with the name of Marie
de Medicis that the King, whose patience was the more easily exhausted
from the fact that he believed himself to be at last independent of her
fascinations, was again driven to resort to the assistance of M. de
Sully, in order to compel the restoration of the written promise of
marriage which he had been weak enough to place in her hands.

It was, indeed, impossible for the sovereign of a great nation longer to
temporize with an insolence which at this period had exceeded all
endurable limits; for not only did the Marquise assert, as she had
previously done, the illegality of the King's union with his wife, but
so thoroughly had her affected devotion wrought upon the minds of the
priests about her that several among them were induced to support her
pretended claim, and even publicly to declare the bans of marriage
between herself and the monarch.[242] Among these, two Capuchins, Father
Hilaire of Grenoble and Father Archange, her confessors, the last in
France, and the first in Rome, attached themselves recklessly to her
interests,[243] while at the same time numerous letters and pamphlets
were distributed in the capital, adv