"Could Nature then no private woman grace, Whom we might dare to love, with such a face, Such a complexion, and so radiant eyes, Such lovely motion, and such sharp replies?" Davenant styles her, very beautifully, "The rich-eyed darling of a monarch's breast." Lord Holland, in the description he sent from Paris, dwells on the charm of her eyes, her smile, and her graceful figure, though he admits her to be rather _petite_; and if the poet and the courtier be distrusted, we have the authority of the puritanic Sir Symond d'Ewes, who allows the influence of her "excellent and sparkling black eyes." Henrietta could be very seductive, and had all the French grace of manner; but, as is well known, she could play the virago, "and cast such a scowl, as frightened all the lords and ladies in waiting." Too much importance is attached to her character and her influence over her husband, in the histories of that time. She was a fascinating, but a superficial and volatile Frenchwoman. With all her feminine love of sway, she had not sufficient energy to govern; and with all her disposition to intrigue, she never had discretion enough to keep her own or the king's secrets. When she rushed through a storm of bullets to save a favourite lap-dog; or when, amid the shrieks and entreaties of her terrified attendants, she commanded the captain of her vessel to "blow up the ship rather than strike to the Parliamentarian,"--it was more the spirit and wilfulness of a woman, who, with all her faults, had the blood of Henri Quatre in her veins, than the mental energy and resolute fortitude of a heroine. Near her hangs her daughter, who inherited her grace, her beauty, her petulance,--the unhappy Henriette d'Orleans,[75] fair, radiant, and lively, with a profusion of beautiful hair; it is impossible to look from the mother to the daughter, without remembering the scene in Retz's memoirs, when the queen said to him, in excuse for her daughter's absence, "My poor Henrietta is obliged to lie in bed, for I have no wood to make a fire for her--et la pauvre enfant était transie de froid."