e the Augustine Fathers of
the Congregation of Bourges.

Meanwhile the influence of Concini and his wife over the mind of the
Queen unhappily increased with time, until the arrogance of the former
became so great that he had the insolence to enter the lists at a grand
tilting at the ring which was publicly held in the Rue St. Antoine in
the presence of the monarch and his Court; a piece of presumption which
was rendered still more unpalatable to Henry by the fact that the
Italian, who was well skilled in such exercises, bore away the prize
for which the whole of his own nobility had contended.

So arrogant, indeed, had he become, and so inflated with the
consciousness of wealth--Marie de Medicis having been lavish even beyond
her means both to his wife and himself--that he entered into a
negotiation for the purchase of La Ferte, a property estimated at
between two and three hundred thousand crowns; and he no sooner
ascertained that the Duchesse de Sully had waited upon the Queen to
entreat of her Majesty to forbid the transfer, as such an acquisition
made by an individual who was generally known to be penniless only a few
years previously would necessarily excite the public disaffection
towards herself, than he had the audacity to proceed to the Arsenal and
to upbraid that lady for her interference in the most unmeasured and
insulting terms, declaring that he was independent both of the King of
France and of his subjects, whatever might be their sex and rank; and
that whoever thwarted him in his projects might live to rue the day in
which they braved his anger.

This intemperance having come to the ears of the King, his indignation
was excessive; but, as on previous occasions, he lacked the moral
courage to assert his dignity; and satisfied himself by bitter
complaints to Sully of the fatal hold which her two Italian attendants
had secured upon the affections of the Queen, and by replying to the
reproaches of Marie upon the subject of his new attachment for Charlotte
des Essarts, and the continued insolence of Madame de Verneuil, with
vehement upbraidings on the vassalage in which she lived to the indecent
caprices and shameless extortions of a waiting-woman and her husband.

Marie de Medicis, who had hoped that the rank in her household which had
been conceded to Leonora would protect her for the future against
allusions to the obscurity of her origin, was greatly incensed by the
tone of contempt still maintained b