This extraordinary person, whose career reads like a fairy story, was at this time at the height of his fame. His handsome face and a certain careless magnificence of manner, which might almost have passed for magnanimity, were greatly admired, and if he showed at times the insolence of the parvenu, much was condoned, at least outwardly, in the man who was the acknowledged favourite of the King of England, and who was able to appear in almost regal splendour, decked out, it was even said, by the jewels of England. He was already well known in Paris, and in the few days he had spent there in 1624, between Madrid and London, he had made an ineffaceable impression upon at least one heart. Few royal stories are sadder than that of Anne of Austria, the queen of Louis XIII. Married as a mere child to an apathetic boy, she neither knew how to win his love nor how to adapt herself to the requirements of her position. Neglected by her husband, bullied by her mother-in-law, and later by Richelieu, she may almost be forgiven for her treasonable correspondence with the enemies of France. Still less can she be blamed that her heart clung too fondly to the relatives she had left in Madrid. To the end of her days she remained a Spaniard, _dévote_ and fanatical beyond the liking of the lively Parisians; a Spaniard also in her unconquerable coquetry. The ladies of her mother's Court, shut up in almost monastical seclusion, were accustomed to amuse themselves during the long hours which intervened between the various religious exercises by dwelling on and recounting in every detail their conquests of the men whom they seldom saw except in the silence of a church or among the crowds of a Court ceremony. Anne, coming from such a life, was unable to understand at once the greater liberty and the greater decorum of French manners. She was beautiful, and she was gifted with a pair of soft, white, exquisitely modelled hands, so that she was able to command the flattery which she loved. Many a gallant worshipped at a distance, but none dared to pay her attentions which seriously compromised her until the English favourite crossed her path. The true story of the loves of these two is not fully known. It died with them and with those in whom they confided; but it is probable that during Buckingham's first visit to Paris something was suspected, and that this was the real reason of the refusal to receive him as the proxy of the King of England. When it was known that he had arrived, uninvited, the wrath of his unwilling hosts was so great that it was only through the intervention of Madame de Chevreuse, the devoted friend of Queen Anne, and the representations of the English Ambassadors that he obtained a reception befitting his rank.