all contributed to make him alike the hero both of the town and of the court. Giddy with a success which surpassed even his expectations, and dazzled by the splendour which he shed around him, he saw only the Queen of France worthy of his homage, and suddenly conceived for her the most vehement passion. Too frivolous to bury this sentiment in his heart, he displayed it with complacency, and his temerity increased with his ostentation. Anne of Austria was a Spaniard and a coquette. She understood gallantry such as her country-women had learned it from the Moors--that gallantry “which permits men to entertain without criminal intentions tender sentiments for women; which inspires in them fine actions, liberality, and all kinds of virtue.”[36] “She did not consider,” says one who best knew Anne of Austria, “that the fine talk, which is ordinarily called honest gallantry, where no particular engagement is entered into, could ever be blamable.”[37] So she tolerated with indulgence and without astonishment a passion congenial to her recollections of her country and her youth, and which, while flattering her self-esteem, did not at all shock her virtue. She received this homage of vanity with the complacency of coquetry, knowing herself to be most beautiful, most powerful, and most worthy of being loved. On Buckingham’s side there was indiscreet persistence, multiplied signs of being in love, and eagerness to be near her; on hers, timid encouragement, gentle sternness, severity and pardon by turns in her looks appeared to Anne of Austria the natural and ordinary incidents of a gallantry where neither her honour nor even her reputation seemed exposed to any peril. Moreover, if numerous festivities gave them frequent opportunities of seeing one another, the court being always present at the many interviews of the Ambassador with the Queen, restrained and embarrassed the enterprising audacity of the one, but entirely justified the confidence of the other.