Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/28

14 extricated himself from the affair by espousing Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the queen fell more deeply than ever into disgrace, and Madame de Chevreuse, perfidiously denounced by the Duke of Orleans, and also by Chalais himself, who, with his dying breath, vainly denied his first confessions, was condemned to depart from France. What part had she had in this conspiracy? That which both love and friendship had forced upon her. Chalais was her lover, and she was devoted to Anne of Austria. She was no more the originator of this plot than of any of the others which the Duke of Orleans so often commenced but never finished; but, on entering it, she brought into it all her ardor and her energy. Richelieu says, and we believe him, that "she did more harm than any one else." She dearly learned the cost of loving a queen too well. Anne of Austria escaped with a slight humiliation, but her courageous confidant saw the man whom she loved perish by the hand of the executioner, and herself torn from all the refinements of life, from the fêtes of the Louvre and from her beautiful château of Dampierre, and forced to seek an asylum in a foreign land. "Then," says Richelieu, "she was transported with rage." She even went so far as to say that they did not know her; that they thought that she only had mind enough for coquetry, but she would show them in time that she was capable of something else; that there was nothing that she would not do to avenge herself; and that she would abandon herself to a soldier of the guards rather than not obtain satisfaction from her enemies. She wished to go to England, where she was sure of the support of Holland, of Buckingham, and of Charles I. himself. This favor was not accorded her; her imprisonment was even talked of, and it was with difficulty that her husband obtained permission for her to retire into Lorraine.

It is well known that, instead of a refuge, she found there