Too passionately enamoured for separation to be able to cure him of his love, and excited still more to see Anne of Austria again by the recollection of his gross rashness, the Duke of Buckingham, whom unfavourable winds detained at Boulogne, returned suddenly to Amiens with Lord Holland, under pretence of having an important letter to deliver to Marie de Medicis, who, owing to a slight illness, had not quitted this town. “Returned again!” said Anne of Austria to Nogent-Bautru, on learning this news; “I thought that we were delivered from him.”[40] She had been bled that morning, and was in bed when the two English noblemen entered her chamber. Buckingham, blinded by his passion, threw himself on his knees before the Queen’s bed, embracing the coverings with ecstasy, and exhibiting, to the great scandal of the ladies of honour, the impetuous sentiments which agitated him. The Countess de Lannoi wished to force him to rise, telling him, with severity, that such behaviour was not according to French customs. “I am not French,” replied the Duke, and he continued, but always in the presence of several witnesses, to eloquently express his tenderness for the Queen. The latter, being very much embarrassed, could not at first say anything; then she complained of such boldness, but without a great deal of indignation; and it is probable that her heart took no part in the reproaches which she addressed to the duke. The next day he departed a second time for Boulogne, and never again saw the Queen of France. Such is the famous scene at Amiens, which furnished opportunities for the gross liveliness of Tallemant des Réaux and the libertine imagination of the Cardinal de Retz.[41] The statements of La Porte, who was present, of Madame de Motteville, who collected her information from eye-witnesses, and of La Rochefoucauld, less likely to show partiality, leave no doubt of Anne of Austria’s innocence. Marie de Medicis, whose interest it then was to injure her with Louis XIII., and who often did so without scruple, could not on this occasion, says La Porte,[42] “avoid bearing witness to the truth, and telling the King that there was nothing in it; that if the Queen might have been willing to act wrongly, it would have been impossible, with so many people about her who were watching her, and that she could not prevent the Duke of Buckingham having esteem or even love for her. She related also a number of things of this kind which had happened to herself in her youth.”