om England all he could; it is no use to
wait for more ample conditions, or to measure them by the Spanish ell;
I have orders against sending off any courier save to give notice of
concession of the dispensation: otherwise there would be nothing but
asking one thing after another." "If we determine to act like Spain, we,
like her, shall lose everything," said Father Berulle. Some weeks later,
on the 6th of January, 1625, Berulle wrote to the cardinal, "For a month
I have been on the point of starting, but we have been obliged to take so
much trouble and have so many meetings on the subject of transcripts and
missives as well as the kernel of the business . . . I will merely
tell you that the dispensation is pure and simple."

King James I. had died on the 6th of April, 1625; and so it was King
Charles I., and not the Prince of Wales, whom the Duke of Chevreuse
represented at Paris on the 11th of May, 1625, at the espousals of
Princess Henrietta Maria. She set out on the 2d of June for England,
escorted by the Duke of Buckingham, who had been sent by the king to
fetch her, and who had gladly prolonged his stay in France, smitten as he
was by the young Queen Anne of Austria. Charles I. went to Dover to meet
his wife, showing himself very amiable and attentive to her. Though she
little knew how fatal they would be to her, the king of England's palaces
looked bare and deserted to the new queen, accustomed as she was to
French elegance; she, however, appeared contented. "How can your Majesty
reconcile yourself to a Huguenot for a husband?" asked one of her suite,
indiscreetly. "Why not?" she replied, with spirit. "Was not my father
one?"

By this speech Henrietta Maria expressed, undoubtedly without realizing
all its grandeur, the idea which had suggested her marriage and been
prominent in France during the whole negotiations. It was the policy of
Henry IV. that Henry IV.'s daughter was bringing to a triumphant issue.
The marriage between Henrietta Maria and Charles I., negotiated and
concluded by Cardinal Richelieu, was the open declaration of the fact
that the style of Protestant or Catholic was not the supreme law of
policy in Christian Europe, and that the interests of nations should not
remain subservient to the religious faith of the reigning or governing
personages.

Unhappily the policy of Henry IV., carried on by Cardinal Richelieu,
found no Queen Elizabeth any longer on the throne of England to
compr