But the nerves of the ex-Queen could endure no
further tension; and on the morrow she removed to a new residence in the
Faubourg St. Germain, where she was shortly afterwards visited by
Bassompierre, who was charged with the condolences of the King on her
late loss.[308]

This fact alone tends more fully to develop the manners and morals (?)
of the age than a thousand comments; and thus we have considered it our
duty to place it upon record.

Meanwhile M. de Saint-Julien was far from having been the only favourite
of the profligate Marguerite, who divided her time between devotional
exercises and the indulgence of those guilty pleasures to which she was
so unhappily addicted; but while the citizens were not slow to remark
her excesses, she gained the love of the poor by a profuse alms-giving,
and enjoyed a perfect impunity of action from the real or feigned
ignorance of the King relative to the private arrangements of her
household. She was, moreover, the avowed patroness of men of letters, by
whom her table was constantly surrounded; and in whose society she took
so much delight that she acquired, by this constant intercourse with the
most learned individuals of the capital, a facility not only of
expression, but also of composition, very remarkable in one of her sex
at that period.[309] Carefully avoiding all political intrigue, she made
no distinction of persons beyond that due to their rank; and thus, while
her intercourse with the Queen was marked by an affectionate respect
peculiarly gratifying to its object, she was no less urbane and
condescending to the Marquise de Verneuil; who had, as may have been
anticipated, already regained all her former influence over the mind of
the monarch, his passion even appearing to have derived new strength
from their temporary estrangement.

The peculiar situation of the Queen, however, who was about once more to
become a mother, and whose tranquillity of mind he feared to disturb at
such a moment, rendered the monarch unusually anxious to conceal this
fact; and it was consequently not until some weeks afterwards that Marie
de Medicis was apprised of the new triumph of her rival.

The month of December accordingly passed away without the domestic
discord which must have arisen had the Queen been less happily ignorant
of her real position; but it was nevertheless fated to be an eventful
one. The death of M. de la Riviere, the King's body-surgeon, a loss
which was severely fel