A few hours after his arrival in the capital, the King paid a visit to the Marquise de Verneuil, to whom he related the escape of himself and his companions;[334] but even on so serious an occasion as this, and one which had threatened such tragical consequences to the Queen, the insolent favourite could not comment without indulging in the sarcastic and bitter pleasantry which she always affected in making any allusion to her royal mistress.  After feeling or feigning great anxiety on the subject of Henry’s own escape, she said with malicious gaiety:  “Had I been there, when once I had seen you safe, I should have exclaimed with great composure, ‘The Queen drinks.’” [335]

Unfortunately the King, taken by surprise, laughed heartily at this sally, a circumstance which was duly reported to Marie de Medicis, and which greatly increased her irritation.  This new cause of offence was so grave that she could not forgive the levity of the King more readily than the heartless insolence of his mistress; and she carried her resentment to so extreme a pitch that she refused to receive him in her apartments.  Such a determination was naturally productive of serious confusion in the palace, as it infringed upon all the accustomed etiquette of the Court, and created great perplexity among the officers of state; but remonstrances were vain.  Marie, stung to the soul by the insult to which she had been subjected, and which her royal consort had not only suffered to pass unrebuked, but to which he had in some degree contributed, would not rescind her resolution; while the King was, in his turn, equally violent.  In vain did the Due de Villeroy, Sully, and others of the great nobles, endeavour to mediate between them:  reason was lost in passion on both sides; and once more Henry declared his determination to exile the Queen to one of his palaces.  From this extreme measure he was, however, dissuaded by his ministers; and at length, after the estrangement between the royal couple had lasted nearly three weeks, a partial reconciliation was effected; but Marie, although she was induced by the representations of her advisers to restrain her indignation, was from that hour alienated in heart from her husband, by whom she felt that her dignity had been compromised both as a Queen and as a wife.

Profiting, however, by this partial calm, several of the nobility proposed to add to the amusements of the Carnival, in commemoration of the recent escape of their Majesties, a ballet in which the Queen consented to appear; and the preparations were already far advanced when the King solicited her permission to include Madame de Moret among the performers, but Marie, who had previously condescended to associate herself in a similar exhibition with the Marquise de Verneuil, had been rendered less amenable by recent circumstances, and she peremptorily refused to appear in such intimate association with another of her husband’s mistresses.  The concession was not one upon which Henry could insist with any propriety, a fact of which the Queen was so well aware, that in order to terminate the affair as gracefully as possible she declined altogether either to assist in the entertainment or even to witness it, a decision which caused it to be abandoned altogether.[336] This mortification was, however, compensated to the Countess by a donation from the King of eighty-five thousand five hundred francs.[337]