Page:Catherine of Bragança, infanta of Portugal, & queen-consort of England.djvu/141

Rh also assisted in the unrobing. When Catherine was in bed Charles came in and took his supper with her—"on her bed" the Portuguese account says, which does not sound exactly comfortable.

Through this meal, as throughout the day, Charles showed with the greatest plainness to every one his attraction to Catherine. He treated her with the most courtly and lover-like attention, and seemed more pleased in her company than in any other—a direct contradiction to Forneron. In point of fact, her simplicity, and innocence, and girlishness, had taken him by storm. She was the strongest of contrasts to the women who angled for his favour, and were nothing but affectation and artifice. His opinion of her is very plain in some letters he wrote in the first few days of their honeymoon, while they still lingered at Portsmouth till her strength was quite regained.

On the 23rd, two days after his marriage, he wrote to his sister Henriette, between whom and himself there existed through their lives the most warm and tender love. This youngest daughter of Charles I., born in Exeter during the wars, smuggled to France to her mother when a baby still, and brought up in the French Court, had made an exceedingly miserable marriage with that worthless brother of King Louis, Philippe, due d'Orleans, who was called Monsieur of France. Madame, the Princess Henriette, was one of the most charming, witty, and delightful women in Europe, as sweet and lovely as a fairy princess. Burnet takes occasion to say of her: "The King's sister, the Duchess of Orleans, was thought the wittiest woman in France; but she had no sort of virtue, and scarce retained common decency"—which was as untrue as the majority of his records.

Charles's correspondence with his sister gives by far the happiest picture of his character and disposition that we have. There he shines as the affectionate