Amongst the most powerful advocates of Prince Charles in the French Court was the Duchess de Chevreuse, to whose influence over Anne of Austria has been attributed her subsequent imprudent encouragement of Buckingham’s discreditable addresses.[186] Formerly the wife of the Duc de Luises, the favourite of Louis the Thirteenth, but married afterwards to the Duc de Chevreuse, a Prince of the House of Lorraine, the Duchess de Chevreuse became the great star of the gay and dissolute scenes in which the young Queen of France sought to bury the remembrance of a husband from whom she recoiled, and of a Queen-Mother and Minister of State whom she both disliked and feared. The Duchess, whose banishment from Court, sometime afterwards, was an event never forgiven by Anne of Austria, was one of the most splendid and lavish as well as the gayest and most fascinating women of her day. Lord Kensington, visiting her one evening at the Louvre, found her and the Duc de Chevreuse dressing themselves for a masque, and covered with such a profusion of jewels as even he never expected again to behold adorning subjects. Shortly afterwards, there entered Anne of Austria and Henrietta, the latter full of glee, of which, as many persons told the ambassador, “the cause might easily be guessed.” “My Lord,” adds the Lord Kensington, addressing the Duke of Buckingham, “I protest to God she is a lovely, sweet young creature. Her growth is not great yet, but her shape is perfect; and they all swear that her sister, the Princess of Piedmont (who is now grown tall and a goodly lady), was not taller than she is at her age.” He feared that Anne ever would be reserved towards him, not liking the “breach and disorder of the Spanish treaty;” but she had become, it was observed, “so truly French” as to wish for this affiance rather than that with her own sister, the Infanta of Spain.[187]
Memoires de Madame de Motteville, vol. i., p. 21.
Everything therefore proceeded favourably, and Henrietta passed hours in the society of Lord Kensington, expatiating upon the Prince, and touching upon English customs. Among other things, she “fell to speaking,” says Lord Kensington, “of ladies riding on horseback, which, she said, was rare here, but frequent in England; and then expressed her delight in that exercise.”[188]