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HENRIETTA MARIA OF FRANCE. 451 nosticate that he would not survive the coronation of the queen a single day. At length, after every representation, though urged for "three entire days" by Sully, in behalf of his beloved master's, mis- givings, had failed to induce the queen to forego her wishes, it was agreed that the enthronement should take place on the 13th of the following May. In the dark consummation of the -fatal tragedy we cannot wonder that the previous and subsequent conduct of Marie should have caused her to be regarded as implicated ; for, besides ill terms subsisting between the royal pair, the queen is said to have been "ni assez surprise, ni assez affligee" at the intelli- gence. The Due d'Epernon, previously almost paralyzed by infirmity, at once manifested a revival of energy which enabled him to secure the regency to the politic widow of the murdered monarch ; in fact, it is too evident that every preparation had been made to remove those obstacles which an uncrowned queen, during the lifetime of her divorced predecessor (Mar- garet de Valois), might otherwise have experienced. The years of infancy even of illustrious personages, as being anterior to their future greatness, present little of interest in detail. Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, afterward Pope Urban the Eighth, named the princess after both her parents, and the two earliest occasions of her appearance in public were the contrasting and rapidly successive spectacles of her mother's coronation and her father's funeral. For some time the monotony of her life was unbroken, except by the festivities attendant upon the accession of her young brother, Louis the Thirteenth ; the companionship of Gaston, afterward Duke of Orleans ; and the nuptials of her two sisters, Elizabeth to Philip the Fourth of Spain, and Christine to Amadee Victorio the Tenth, Duke of Savoy. Her attachment to her mother, which was ardently returned, amounted to a species of idolatry, and she early evinced strong inclinations toward music and painting ; while a religious education, enthusiastically conducted by a Carmelite religieuse, rendered her faith in the tenets of her church strict and decided. Very early also did this little princess give promising tokens of that extreme fascination of manner and sweetness of disposition which, added to rare beauty, and a voice of the most thrilling melody, constantly elicited the admiration of her countrymen, before whom it was the policy of those in power to present her, in order to diminish their own unpopularity. Alternate fetes and civil feuds, involv-