upon her own feet, for thus high I am, and neither higher nor lower."
After an hour's conversation in privacy, Henrietta took her dinner
surrounded by the court; and the king, who had already dined, performing
the office of her carver, cut a pheasant and some venison. By the side
of the queen stood her ghostly confessor, solemnly reminding her that
this was the eve of John the Baptist, and was to be fasted, exhorting
her to be cautious that she set no scandalous example on her first
arrival. But Charles and his court were now to be gained over, as well
as John the Baptist. She affected to eat very heartily of the forbidden
meat, which gave great comfort, it seems, to several of her new
heretical subjects then present: but we may conceive the pangs of so
confirmed a devotee. She carried her dissimulation so far, that being
asked about this time whether she could abide a Huguenot? she replied,
"Why not? was not my father one?" Her ready smiles, the graceful wave of
her hand, the many "good signs of hope," as a contemporary in a
manuscript letter expresses it, induced many of the English to believe
that Henrietta might even become one of themselves! Sir Symonds D'Ewes,
as appears by his manuscript diary, was struck by "her deportment to her
women, and her looks to her servants, which were so sweet and
humble!"[207] However, this was in the first days of her arrival, and
these "sweet and humble looks" were not constant ones; for a courier at
Whitehall, writing to a friend, observes that "the queen, however little
of stature, yet is of a pleasing countenance, if she be pleased,
otherwise full of spirit and vigour, and seems of more than ordinary
resolution;" and he adds an incident of one of her "frowns." The room in
which the queen was at dinner, being somewhat over-heated with the fire
and company, "she drove us all out of the chamber. I suppose none but a
queen could have cast such a scowl."[208] We may already detect the fair
waxen mask melting away on the features it covered, even in one short
month!

By the marriage-contract, Henrietta was to be allowed a household
establishment, composed of her own people; and this had been contrived
to be not less than a small French colony, exceeding three hundred
persons. It composed, in fact, a French faction, and looks like a covert
project of Richelieu's to further his intrigues here, by opening a
perpetual correspondence with the discontented Catholics of England. In
the instr