to His Insolence of
Buckingham, so indifferent of whom he might slight or offend. And then
the devil took a hand in the game.

At Amiens, the Queen-Mother fell ill, so that the Court was compelled to
halt there for a few days to give her Majesty the repose she required.
Whilst Amiens was thus honoured by the presence of three queens at
one and the same time within its walls, the Duc de Chaulnes gave an
entertainment in the Citadel. Buckingham attended this, and in the dance
that followed the banquet it was Buckingham who led out the Queen.

Thereafter the royal party had returned to the Bishop's Palace, where it
was lodged, and a small company went out to take the evening cool in the
Bishop's fragrant gardens on the Somme, Buckingham ever at the Queen's
side. Anne of Austria was attended by her Mistress of the Household,
the beautiful, witty Marie de Rohan, Duchess of Chevreuse, and by her
equerry, Monsieur de Putange. Madame de Chevreuse had for cavalier that
handsome coxcomb, Lord Holland, who was one of Buckingham's creatures,
between whom and herself a certain transient tenderness had sprung up.
M. de Putange was accompanied by Madame de Vernet, with whom at the time
he was over head and ears in love. Elsewhere about the spacious gardens
other courtiers sauntered.

Now either Madame de Chevreuse and M. de Putange were too deeply
engrossed in their respective companions, or else the state of their
own hearts and the tepid, languorous eventide disposed them complacently
towards the affair of gallantry upon which their mistress almost seemed
to wish to be embarked. They forgot, it would seem, that she was a
queen, and remembered sympathetically that she was a woman, and that she
had for companion the most splendid cavalier in all the world. Thus they
committed the unpardonable fault of lagging behind, and allowing her to
pass out of their sight round the bend of an avenue by the water.

No sooner did Buckingham realize that he was alone with the Queen, that
the friendly dusk and a screen of trees secured them from observation,
than, piling audacity up on audacity, he determined to accomplish here
and now the conquest of this lovely lady who had used him so graciously
and received his advances with such manifest pleasure.

"How soft the night! How exquisite!" he sighed.

"Indeed," she agreed. "And how still, but for the gentle murmur of the
river."

"The river!" he cried, on a new note. "That is no gentle murmur.