'My head is stunned with the acclamations of the people,' writes Charles
from Canterbury on May 26 to his 'deare, deare sister,' and amidst all
the 'vast amount of business' attending the Restoration he found time to
remember her love of riding, and to send her a saddle of green velvet,
with trimmings of gold and silver lace. Even queen Henrietta forgot his
illness and her troubles for a moment. She was no longer La Reine
Malheureuse, but the mother of a reigning king, and when Monsieur came
galloping up to Colombes immediately after the royal couple had returned
to Fontainebleau, Henrietta received him with open arms as her future
son. Queen Anne was no less delighted than her sister-in-law, and
herself came to Colombes in state to carry both mother and daughter to
Fontainebleau in one of those old painted and gilded glass coaches that
contained nine or ten people. Here they paid their respects to the
bridal pair, who received them with great kindness. The young queen was
a good-natured girl, with pretty fair hair and pink and white face, but
stupid and ignorant, and never likely to be a rival to Henriette. Still
they soon made friends, and then the princess drove home with her
mother, both of them much pleased with their visit. After a ball given
by Monsieur at his palace of St. Cloud, and other fêtes at which
Henriette was almost as much stared at as Marie Thérèse, came the state
entry of the king and queen into Paris, and the queen-mother (as Anne of
Austria was now called) invited Henrietta Maria and her daughter to her
balcony near a wonderful triumphal arch in the Rue Saint Antoine. It was
August 26 and a beautiful day, and the narrow streets, as well as the
windows and even roofs of the houses, were thronged to overflowing. The
young queen sat alone in her glass coach, wearing a black dress heavily
embroidered in gold and silver and covered with precious stones, which
suited her fair complexion and pale golden hair. The king, also in gold
and silver and mounted on a magnificent black horse, rode on the right
of the coach, followed by his cousins, the Princess of the Blood, and
the highest nobles in France, while on the left was Monsieur, gay and
gallant on a white charger, diamonds blazing on his coat and on his
plumed hat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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