The Life of Marie de Medicis — Volume 1 by Julia Pardoe
page 62 of 434 (14%)
page 62 of 434 (14%)
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prayer. On his reappearance he was calm,[51] and simply remarked: "God
has provided for it." A few days subsequently a courier arrived at Rome with intelligence of the death of the Duchess. Meanwhile Gabrielle, by her unbridled vanity, had counteracted all the exertions of her partisans. Aware of her power over the King, and believing that this divorce from Marguerite once obtained, she should find little difficulty in overcoming all other obstacles, she was unguarded enough prematurely to assume the state and pretensions of the regality to which she aspired, affecting airs of patronage towards the greatest ladies of the Court, and lavishing the most profuse promises upon the sycophants and flatterers by whom she was surrounded. The infatuation of the King, whose passion for his arrogant mistress appeared to increase with time, tended, as a natural consequence, to encourage these unseemly demonstrations; nor did the friends of the exiled Queen fail to render her cognizant of every extravagance committed by the woman who aspired to become her successor; upon which Marguerite, who, morally fallen as she was in her own person, had never forgotten that she was alike the daughter and the consort of a king, suddenly withdrew her consent to the proposed divorce; declaring, in terms more forcible than delicate, that no woman of blighted character should ever, through her agency, usurp her place. The sudden and frightful death of the Duchess, which shortly afterwards supervened, having, however, removed her only objection to the proposed measure, her marriage with the King was, at length, finally declared null and void, to the equal satisfaction of both parties. The event which Marguerite had dreaded had now become impossible, and she at |
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