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.
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