With daybreak all was confusion at Colombes. Messengers hurried off to Paris to acquaint the King of France with the news of his aunt's death, and to S. Cloud to break the sad tidings to the Duchess of Orleans, who would be her mother's truest mourner. By some strange oversight or malice the English ambassador was left to hear the intelligence by chance. Ralph Montagu, who had a very poor opinion of the Earl of St. Albans, whose position as Lord Chamberlain to the late Queen gave him considerable power, believed that that nobleman had purposely kept him in ignorance, so that there should not be "left a silver spoon in the house."[430] In the interests of the King of England he hurried off to the King of France, who, in spite of the protests of the Earl, caused seals to be placed upon his aunt's property until it could be properly disposed of. There was great mourning for Henrietta in France, not only because she was personally beloved, but because the King and the people saw in her not so much the widow of the King of England as the last surviving child of the much-loved Henry the Great. High and low vied with each other in their desire to do her honour, and Louis XIV expressed his wish that she should lie by her father in the royal Abbey of S. Denys, where he ordered that a splendid funeral service, following the precedent of that of his mother, should be celebrated at his expense. He immediately dispatched a _lettre de cachet_[431] to the Prior and monks of the house, ordering them to receive with all honour the body of the Queen of England. Meanwhile at Colombes on a bed of state lay the corpse.[432] But that same evening, following the custom of the times, the heart was taken out, enclosed in a silver casket, and carried to its last resting-place at Chaillot. A sorrowful company escorted the precious relic, which was met at the door of the convent by the religious, each of whom held in her hand a lighted taper. Then in a set little speech the Abbé Montagu, as Grand Almoner to the late Queen, delivered it over to the Superior, commending it to the pious care of the community.