rejoicing.

It was not until three days later, on May 11th, that the actual wedding took place. [13] The church chosen for the religious ceremony was the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, which was adorned with hangings of silk and tapestry and of cloth of gold, to hide as far as possible the lines of the Gothic architecture which was condemned by the taste of the day. Every detail of the ceremony[14] was arranged when an unfortunate difficulty arose which caused much ill-feeling and considerable trouble.

Jean François de Gondi, a member of one of those Italian families which had found fortune in France in the wake of a foreign Queen, now occupied the See of Paris. He was the first of the long line of bishops of the capital to receive the honours of archiepiscopal rank, and, as his character, which has been sketched for us by his candid nephew, Cardinal de Retz, was at once feeble and vainglorious, it is probable that his head was a little turned. His anger, therefore, may be imagined when he discovered that he was not to officiate at a wedding which took place at his own cathedral, but was to be set aside for the Cardinal de Rochefoucault. Mingled with personal pique was the bitter feeling of the infringement of the rights of the episcopate. He summoned all the prelates who were then in Paris to a meeting, and they joined with him in presenting a petition on the subject to the King. But Louis and the Cardinal (who had provided himself with a brief from the Pope which, however, was not produced) stood firm; and the upshot of the affair was that the Archbishop, though he was forced to give way and was much blamed by his clergy for doing so, was nevertheless so angry that he went off to the country, refusing to have anything to do with the wedding, and leaving the nuptial mass to be said by his senior suffragan, the Bishop of Chartres.

But this was not the worst. The absence of the Archbishop might have been supported with philosophy, but the strike extended not only to the Chapter, but even to such indispensable people as the singing-men, who, at the last moment, had to be hurriedly replaced by singers from the King's cabinet and chapel.

The English alliance was very popular in Paris. It was remembered that if the bridegroom was King of England and a heretic, he was also a Scotchman born and the grandson of the much-loved Mary of Scotland, who, it was said, was doubtless praying in heaven for his conversion. Another side of the general satisfaction was expressed by poetic references to the union of the sister of Mars with Neptune, the King of the Waves, which, it was hoped, would bring about a happy state of things when

"toute la Terre
Soit aux François et Anglois."[15]

It is not surprising, therefore, that the early hours of the great day saw the parvis of Notre-Dame crowded with spectators waiting patiently under the rain of an inclement May morning. The concourse was so great that the neighbouring streets had to be secured by barriers and patrolled by the Swiss Guard to make free passage for the coaches of the nobility which were perpetually arriving at the doors of the cathedral to deposit their loads of gaily dressed ladies.

Meanwhile, what of the bride for whom all this was prepared? She had spent the previous day at her mother's favourite convent, that of the Carmelite nuns whom Bérulle had "fetched out of Spain" to place in a house of the Faubourg S. Jacques. There her mother's friend, Mother Magdeleine of S. Joseph, gave her a great deal of advice, seasoned with much piety and some judgment. Thence she returned to pass the night at the Louvre, and to spend a quiet morning, until at about two o'clock on the afternoon of her wedding-day she set out for the Archbishop's palace, which that dignitary, in spite of his chagrin, had placed at the disposal of the wedding-party. There in the fine old house overlooking the Seine, which two hundred years later was to fall a victim to the fury of the Parisian mob,[16] Henrietta spent several hours in putting on the same magnificent dress which she had worn at her betrothal, so that five o'clock had already struck when her brother the King came to fetch her that he might conduct her to the cathedral.

The procession was drawn up. First came an officer known as the captain of the gate, behind whom walked a hundred men of the King's Swiss Guard, drums beating and banners flying. They were followed by the band, which was so effective that while the hautbois ravished the ears of those who heard them, the drums would have stirred the most faint-hearted to courage. As to the trumpets, they made the hearts of the listeners leap for joy within their bodies.

At last, after heralds, marshals, peers, and dukes, after the proxy bridegroom and the Ambassadors from England, came the central figure of the procession, the bride herself, supported by her two brothers, one of whom was also her King.

The sickly, depressed Louis XIII, notwithstanding his magnificent dress of cramoisi velvet, so thickly covered with cloth of gold that the foundation hardly appeared, afforded a sad contrast to the splendid vitality of his little sister, whose dark curls were adorned by a crown of gold set with diamonds, and bearing in front an enormous pearl of inestimable value. The train of her royal mantle, which was of velvet and cloth of gold, embroidered with fleurs-de-lis, was carried by the Princesses of Condé and Conti and by the Countess of Soissons, the mother of the rejected lover, who had asked and obtained leave to absent himself from the ceremony. So heavy was it that to give the bride greater comfort an officer walked under it and supported it with his head and hands. Gaston of Orleans, who was at his sister's left hand, was not allowed to rival his sovereign in apparel, for a rule had been made that the King, the Duke of Chevreuse, and the Earls of Carlisle and Holland should be the only gentlemen to appear in cloth of gold. He had to content himself with silk. The rear was brought up by the two Queens, the elder plainly dressed in black, relieved by splendid jewels; the younger magnificent in cloth of gold and silver. A crowd of highly born ladies followed, among whom may be mentioned Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the rich heiress whom Gaston of Orleans was to wed reluctantly a year later, and Madame de Chevreuse, who, no doubt, cast admiring glances at the handsome face and figure of her lover, the Earl of Holland.

The wedding ceremony was not to take place in the church but, in accordance with the old ritual of matrimony, on a platform erected outside the west door,[17] which was connected with the archiepiscopal palace by a long wooden gallery upholstered in beautiful tapestry. On this platform, under a canopy of cloth of gold, Cardinal de Rochefoucault was waiting to receive the bride, while from the stands which had been put up round the parvis,