forgive. Be that or another
the reason, the fact that Richelieu hated her, and subjected her to
his vindictive persecution, is beyond dispute. And it was he who by a
hundred suggestions poisoned against her the King's mind, and thus kept
ever open the gulf between the two.

The eyes of that neglected young wife dilated a little, and admiration
kindled in them, when they rested upon the dazzling figure of my Lord of
Buckingham. He must have seemed to her a figure of romance, a prince out
of a fairy-tale.

That betraying glance he caught, and it inflamed at once his monstrous
arrogance. To the scalps already adorning the belt of his vanity he
would add that of the love of a beautiful young queen. Perhaps he was
thrilled in his madness by the thought of the peril that would spice
such an adventure. Into that adventure he plunged forthwith. He wooed
her during the eight days that he abode in Paris, flagrantly, openly,
contemptuous of courtiers and of the very King himself. At the Louvre,
at the Hotel de Chevreuse, at the Luxembourg, where the Queen-Mother
held her Court, at the Hotel de Guise, and elsewhere he was ever at the
Queen's side.

Richelieu, whose hard pride and self-love had been wounded by the Duke's
cavalier behaviour, who despised the fellow for an upstart, and may even
have resented that so shallow a man should have been sent to treat with
a statesman of his own caliber--for other business beside the marriage
had brought Buckingham to Paris--suggested to the King that the Duke's
manner in approaching the Queen lacked a proper deference, and the
Queen's manner of receiving him a proper circumspection. Therefore the
King's long face became longer, his gloomy eyes gloomier, as he looked
on. Far, however, from acting as a deterrent, the royal scowl was mere
incense to the vanity of Buckingham, a spur to goad him on to greater
daring.

On the 2nd of June a splendid company of some four thousand French
nobles and ladies, besides Buckingham and his retinue, quitted Paris to
accompany Henrietta Maria, now Queen of England, on the first stage of
her journey to her new home. The King was not of the party. He had
gone with Richelieu to Fontainebieau, leaving it to the Queen and the
Queen-Mother to accompany his sister.

Buckingham missed no chance upon that journey of pressing his attentions
upon Anne of Austria. Duty dictated that his place should be beside the
carriage of Henrietta Maria. But duty did not apply