Henrietta received plenty of sympathetic words and visits of condolence, but she received little else. It was believed that the condition to which Mazarin was reduced by the Frondeurs had emboldened the rebels in England to commit their last desperate act, but the instructions which the Cardinal penned to the French ambassador in London, before the fatal January 30th, show that his fear of the Spanish was a good deal stronger than his desire to help the King of England, and after the tragedy he only expressed polite regrets that France had not been able to follow the good example of Holland, which had protested against the regicide, and made a great favour of recalling the ambassador and refusing to recognize the republican agents in Paris. It was reserved for an old servant of Henrietta to show sympathy in a more practical manner. Du Perron, who at the request of the Queen of England had been translated to the See of Evreux, found himself detained by the Frondeurs, sorely against his will, in his own cathedral city. Ill, and wounded in his tenderest feelings by a compulsory semblance of disloyalty, he so took to heart the news of the terrible death of King Charles, to whom he was greatly attached, that he became rapidly worse and died in a few days. The story of the heroic manner in which Charles met his terrible death wrung tears from many an eye in Paris. Henrietta, who had lived with him for twenty years, must have known that he would not fail in personal courage. After all, misfortune was no novelty to the House of Stuart. Charles' own grandmother had mounted the scaffold of Elizabeth, and of his remoter ancestors who sat upon the throne of Scotland few had escaped a violent death; when the moment came he was ready to fulfil the tragic destiny of his race. To his widow his royal courage was so much a matter of course that it brought her little consolation; but some real comfort she might have known could she have foreseen that such ready acceptance of his fate would not only blot out in the mind of his people the memory of his many failings, but would throw a glory over his name and career which has not completely faded even to the present day. [Illustration: HENRY JERMYN, EARL OF ST. ALBANS FROM AN ENGRAVING]