velations of Chalais while under torture, of having
intrigued to procure the death of her husband, and her own marriage with
his brother. To this accusation the Spanish Princess disdainfully
replied that "she should have gained so little by the exchange, that the
absurdity of the charge must suffice for its refutation;" but her
haughty and indignant retort produced no effect upon her judges. She was
commanded thenceforward to reside exclusively at the palaces of the
Louvre and St. Germain; without the privilege of receiving a single
guest, not even excepting the ambassador of the King her brother, or the
Spanish attendants who had accompanied her to France, and, moreover,
forbidden all correspondence beyond the limits of the kingdom; while, at
the same time, as if to complete her humiliation, she was strictly
prohibited from receiving any male visitor in her apartments during the
absence of the King.[100]

Although, as we have stated, Richelieu was present at this degrading
scene, he nevertheless professed to be perfectly independent of what he
thought proper to designate as mere family dissensions, entirely beyond
the functions of a minister; and thus the whole odium of the proceedings
fell upon Louis XIII and the Queen-mother, while the Cardinal himself
remained ostensibly absorbed in public business. Neither the great
nobles nor the people were, however, deceived by this assumed
disinterestedness; but all felt alike convinced that the total
alienation which supervened between the royal couple was simply a part
of the system by which Richelieu sought one day exclusively to govern
France. Henriette Marie had left Paris after her betrothal,
accompanied by a numerous retinue of French attendants of both sexes,
and by several of the priests of the Oratory, attired in their black
gowns; and on her arrival at Whitehall she had been permitted to have
the services of her religion performed in one of the apartments of that
palace; but this concession did not, unhappily, serve to satisfy the
exactions of the girl-Queen, who, even during the first days of her
residence in England, suffered herself to betray all her antipathy to
the heretical country which was hereafter to be her home. At the public
ceremonial of her marriage, when the venerable Abbey of Westminster was
crowded with princes, bishops, and barons, she refused to receive her
crown from the hands of a Protestant prelate, or to bend her knee before
the Lord Primate;