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.