borrowed his portrait from one of the English envoys who was accustomed to wear it round his neck, and, having carried it off to her private apartments, she gazed at it for the space of an hour, blushing the while at her own audacity. Of Henrietta's childhood there is little to record; as one of her biographers sadly remarks, her troubles began before she could know them, for she was not a year old when her noble-hearted father perished by the knife of Ravaillac. Her early years were passed under the care of her mother, who, though she was solicitous for the child's health and education, and reared her with the state due to a daughter of France,[2] is said to have cared much less for her than for her elder sister Christine: a sister still older, the beautiful and high-minded Elizabeth, left her native country to become the unhappy wife of Philip IV of Spain, while Henrietta was still too young a child to retain much personal memory of her; but touching letters remain written from the desolate grandeur of Madrid to show how fondly Elizabeth's heart clung to the pretty child she had left in Paris, for whose portrait she begs, and to whom she sends little gifts such as some toys for the toilet of her dolls, "so that when you play you may remember me."[3] The two sisters never met again, and the Spanish princess who came to France in Elizabeth's stead was a poor exchange for her, even if Henrietta, who was possessed of a sparkling and somewhat biting wit, had not been fond of exercising it upon her brother's demure wife, with whom her mother was never on good terms. That Henrietta's childhood was, in the main, healthy and happy, cannot be doubted. In person she resembled her father more than did either of her sisters, and she had inherited also his gay disposition. Her days were passed in one beautiful château or another, either the Louvre or the Luxembourg, or S. Germain-en-Laye, with its beautiful forest and its terrace overlooking the Seine. Her governess was the kind and faithful Madame de Montglas, who had tended not only her, but her brothers and sisters from their earliest years; and if she failed in some degree to win her mother's heart, with others she was more fortunate. Christine left her when her years numbered but ten, but so strong was the tie of the common childhood of the sisters, that they corresponded warmly to the end of their lives. Her relations with her brothers were very affectionate, and the King, in particular, cherished her as his favourite sister, probably on account of her ready wit, a quality which, like many people who are dull themselves, he greatly admired. Finally, her charms invited a suitor while she was still almost a child, in the person of the Count of Soissons, a scion of the royal house, who may well have been as much enamoured of the dark, sparkling eyes which were the little Princess's chief beauty, as of her position as a daughter of France.