Charles wrote most kindly to his mother, begging her to come to England to share his triumph, and she confessed, in a letter to her sister Christine, that she should like before she died to see her family reunited after their long wanderings, and "vagabonds no more." But she delayed several months, during the course of which her nephew, Louis XIV, whom she had once hoped to see her son-in-law, married the bride of his mother's choosing, the Infanta of Spain. The Queen of England, in company with her sister of France, repaired to the house of Madame de Beauvais,[422] whence, from a balcony overlooking the Rue S. Antoine, the royal ladies witnessed the entry into Paris of the King of France and his wife, Louis riding on horseback, and the bride sitting in a car drawn by six splendid horses. Only a few weeks after this day of rejoicing Henrietta's joy was turned to grief, and even her pleasure in her son's restoration was dashed by the sad news of the death of her youngest son Henry, who had grown into a tall, fine young man, whose gallant bearing was much admired when he rode into London at the left hand of his brother the King, on the happy 29th of May. The poor lad was smitten by the scourge of smallpox, and in a few days he was laid in the grave. It was not until October that the Queen turned her steps towards England, accompanied by her youngest daughter, who was now a girl of sixteen, the beautiful "Princesse blanche comme albâtre,"[423] who was soon to be the bride of her cousin Philip, the brother of Louis XIV. In spite of the happy occasion, it was sad to Henrietta to retrace the wedding journey of her youth, and to have to take part in festivities which recalled those of that long-passed time. On this occasion she set sail from Calais, but it was again at Dover that she set foot upon the soil of her adopted country, which she had not seen for sixteen years, and which her daughter had left as a child too young for memory. [Illustration: THE RUE ST. ANTOINE, PARIS (SHOWING THE CHAPEL OF THE VISITANDINES) FROM AN ENGRAVING BY IVAN MERLEN]