At this period, whether it were that the King hoped, by occupying her attention with subjects of more moment, to be enabled to pursue his liaison with Madame de Verneuil with less difficulty, or that his advancing age rendered him in reality anxious to initiate her into the mysteries of government, it is certain that he endeavoured to induce the Queen to take more interest than she had hitherto done in questions of national importance; and revealed to her many state secrets, not one of which, as he afterwards declared to Sully, did she ever communicate, even to her most confidential friends.  But Marie de Medicis was far from evincing the delight which he had anticipated at his avowed wish that she should share with him in the hopes and disappointments of royalty; her ambition had not then been thoroughly awakened; she still felt as a wife and as a woman rather than as a Queen; and an insolence from Madame de Verneuil occupied her feelings more nearly than a threatened conspiracy.  So great, indeed, was her distaste to the new character in which she was summoned to appear, that when the King occasionally addressed her with a gay smile as Madame la Regente, a cloud invariably gathered upon her brow.  Upon one occasion, when the royal couple were walking in the park at Fontainebleau, attended by all the Court, and that the monarch, who led the Dauphin by the hand, vainly endeavoured to induce him to jump across a little stream which ran beside their path, Henry became so enraged by his cowardice and obstinacy that he raised him in his arms to dip him into the pigmy current, a punishment which was, however, averted by the entreaties of his mother; and the King reluctantly consented that he should suffer nothing more than the mortification of being compelled to exchange her care for that of his governess, Madame de Montglat.  As the child was led away the King sighed audibly, but in a few seconds he resumed the conversation which had been thus unpleasantly interrupted, and once more he addressed the Queen as Madame la Regente.

“I entreat of you, Sire, not to call me by that name,” said Marie; “it is full of associations which cannot fail to be painful to me.”

[Illustration:  MARIE DE MEDICIS.  Paris:  Richard Bentley and Son 1890.]

The King looked earnestly and even sadly upon her for a moment ere he replied, and then it was in a tone as grave as that in which she uttered her expostulation.  “You are right,” he said, “quite right not to wish to survive me, for the close of my life will be the commencement of your own troubles.  You have occasionally shed tears when I have flogged your son, but one day you will weep still more bitterly either over him or yourself.  My favourites have often excited your displeasure, but you will find yourself some time hence more ill-used by those who obtain an influence over the actions of Louis.  Of one thing I can assure you, and that is, knowing your temper so well as I do, and foreseeing that which his will prove in after years—­you, Madame, self-opinionated, not to say headstrong, and he obstinate—­you will assuredly break more than one lance together.” [311]