My mother loved displays of any sort—banquets, ballets, any kind of dancing and singing; she loved fine clothes too and was determined to have them because she believed that entertainments of a lavish nature made the people forget their grievances. It was no wonder that she had forced the Duc de Sully into retirement. He would have been horrified to see the exchequer, which he had always kept under his control and that of my father, dwindling away.
Paris was becoming a very beautiful city; and my mother liked to call attention to all that she and the late King had done to make it so. She wanted to give balls and fêtes throughout Paris. This she did and the people certainly loved to see the carriages passing through the streets and to catch glimpses of the nobility in all their splendor. On summer evenings the whole Court would go to the Place Royale where my father had begun to build what he intended to be a bazaar, lined with shops rather like St. Mark’s in Venice. My mother was very enthusiastic—possibly because of its Italian associations, and as my father had died before it was completed, she had had it finished in time for the wedding. There was a promenade known as the Cours de la Reine because she had planted several rows of trees along it and in an attempt to win the people’s favor had opened it to the public.
They thronged there and were delighted to catch glimpses of the grand seigneurs and ladies walking in the gardens.
Alas, it needed more than that to win the people’s favor, and even if my mother had been the best of rulers, she could not have hoped for great popularity, because she was an Italian.
Many of the nobles lived in the houses of the Place Royale and they all had magnificent gardens with wonderful examples of the skill of topiary, and the sculptured figures and glistening fountains were a splendid sight.
“See what a wonderful city we have given you!” That was what my mother was saying.
But the people continued to dislike her and they complained bitterly about the rise of Concini.
It was about this time that Mamie was brought into the nurseries to help her mother with the children. That meant chiefly Gaston and me, for Christine was at that time nine years old and so considered herself to be very grown up.
Mamie did not seem old to me although most people over fourteen usually did. She was even older than that—in her middle teens, I believe—and I loved her from the moment I set eyes on her.
She exuded an air of wisdom; she was serene; and she did not treat me as a child, so that I could ask her questions without fearing to expose my ignorance as I did with most people.
Then there was Anne, the new Queen, who was only thirteen and not quite old enough to be a wife, so I saw a great deal of her too.
We liked each other in a mild kind of way—not as I liked Mamie, of course, but although Anne gave herself certain airs and was a little coquettish in a rather prim way, she was not clever and hardly ever looked at a book, and this endeared her to me; she was lazy and did all she could to evade lessons; and she loved dancing and singing and we discussed ballets and danced and sang together; and she, with Gaston and me, arranged a dance which we said we would perform together whenever we had the opportunity to do so.
So I had two welcome additions to my life in Anne and dear Mamie. The days seemed to have become full of pleasure. I had no notion of the storms which were gathering in the country.
Then I began to learn, through Mamie, something of what was going on.
“You should know,” she told me. “It is a time of great events and as the daughter of a king you may well have your part to play in it.”
That made me feel very important.
It was then that she told me about the murder of my father and that ever since his death my mother had been Regent and would doubtless remain so until it was considered that my brother Louis was of an age to rule.
“When will that be?” I asked. “Poor Louis. He is not much like a king.”
“It might be sooner than you think.”
She pursed her lips and looked mysterious, glancing over her shoulder in a manner which I found most exciting. That was Mamie’s way. She created intrigue and made mystery around it.
I remember flinging my arms about her—it must have been some six months after she had come to the nursery—and making her promise that she would never go away.
She had stroked my hair and rocked me to and fro. “I’ll never go until they force me to,” she promised.
For all her exciting outlook on life, Mamie was a realist. “It could be that the time will come when I shall have to go. But for now…we are safe. I don’t think anyone wants to part us. To tell the truth my mother finds me too useful here with you children.”
“Gaston loves you too,” I told her. “And Christine also…although she doesn’t show it as I do.”
“Poor Christine! She thinks a great deal about the Princesse Elizabeth, and she fears that one day what has happened to her sister will happen to her.”
“Will it?”
Mamie nodded slowly. “Almost certainly,” she said. “Princesses usually marry.”
“I am a princesse….”
“A little one. You have a lot of growing up to do.”
She was comforting me, but I knew what was in store for me although it had not yet appeared on the horizon. But it would come, because it came to all Princesses.
“We shall always be together,” I said fiercely.
And she did not deny that we should.
She changed my life for me. Although it would soon have changed after the wedding in any case, she put something beautiful into it. I realized for the first time that I wanted a mother—someone to care about me, to scold me at times, to tell me about life, to comfort me when I needed comfort, someone who was the most important person in the world to me—and I to her. I felt I was beginning to get somewhere near that relationship with Mamie. And how strange it was that only then I knew that I had missed it.
She began to make me aware. She told me what was happening all around me. It was by no means what it seemed, and sometimes it was a little frightening, but as conveyed by Mamie always exciting.
“Who is Concini?” I asked, and instead of telling me it was no concern of mine, and that I should know all I needed to know when I was older, she told me.
My mother had brought Italians with her when she came to France. It was inevitable. Usually attendants were dismissed when a young princess came into a new country, but Marie de Médicis had kept some of hers, and many were saying that it was to the detriment of France.
“She brought with her Elenora Galagaï,” Mamie told me, “who was the daughter of her nurse and who had been brought up with her. They grew up to be very fond of each other…like two sisters.”
“As we are…you and I, Mamie,” I put in.
“Yes,” agreed Mamie. “It is very like that. Well, when she came to France to marry the King, your mother refused to be parted from Elenora Galagaï and brought her with her. Then because she wanted to see her settled she arranged for her to be married to a man for whom she had the greatest regard. This was another Italian who had come with her to France—Concino Concini. He was the son of a notary from Florence and she had made him her secretary. They were married and, of course, being such favorites of the Queen, they planned to make their fortunes.”
“And did they?” I asked.
“My dear Princesse! Did they indeed! Concini became the Maréchal d’Ancre. You know of him.”
“I saw him at the wedding celebrations with my mother. Charles d’Albert, who was with my brother, did not seem to like him very much.”