Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/112

98 three friends and promised to follow them—and in fact, she did follow them, but in conformity with her character and with the interests of the party whom she had long served and would not now abandon. As the queen showed much joy at seeing her again, she did not at once perceive the change which had taken place in her feelings, and she persuaded herself that her constant presence would soon restore to her her former empire.

The first thing that Madame de Chevreuse proposed was the return of Châteauneuf. La Rochefoucauld gives us here a portrait of the ex-keeper of the seals, somewhat flattering perhaps, but not at all exaggerated, in which he imperfectly discloses the plan of the government which his friends, the Importants, wished to give to France—the same which the earliest Frondeurs afterwards acknowledged, and still later, the friends of the Duke de Bourgogne, the last Importants of the seventeenth century: "The good sense and the long political experience of M. de Châteauneuf," says La Rochefoucauld, "were well known to the queen. He had endured a rigorous imprisonment for having been in her interest; he was firm, decisive, attached to the State, and more capable than any other in France of re-establishing the ancient system of government which Cardinal de Richelieu had begun to destroy. He was, besides, intimately attached to Madame de Chevreuse, and she well knew the surest methods of ruling him. She therefore urged his return with many entreaties." Châteauneuf had already obtained permission to exchange the gloomy prison where he had pined for ten years for a sort of exile on one of his estates. Madame de Chevreuse demanded the end