Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/44

30 persuade Madame de Chevreuse that his heart is filled with both for her who will not believe his words. I would give my life to talk with you, but I know not how to manage this, for the cardinal must not know it. Consult with the bearer respecting the means for it, and believe that nothing but death can take away the sentiments that I feel for you.

"Never has there been any thing like the extravagance of the cardinal. He has written and sent the strangest complaints to Madame de Chevreuse. He says that she has constantly ridiculed him to Germain, (Lord Jermyn, the agent and particular friend of the Queen of England,) that he might tell in his own country of the contempt in which she holds him; that he knows for a certainty that Madame de Chevreuse and M. de Châteauneuf are in correspondence, and that your servants are constantly in my house; that I receive Brion because he is his enemy, in order to displease him; that everybody says that he is in love with me, and that he will no longer endure such conduct. Such is the state of the cardinal's mind. Send me word what you think of all this, but feign to know nothing of it. I shall see the cardinal here, and will inform you of all that passes. Believe that whatever may happen to your master, he will do nothing that is unworthy of himself, or which shall cause you to blush for belonging to him. I am a little better in health, and more than ever resolved to esteem M. de Châteauneuf till death, as I have promised you."

What was not the rage of the proud and imperious cardinal when he acquired certain proof that he had thus been deceived by a woman and betrayed by a friend! His vengeance fell heavily upon the two guilty ones. The only one of their accomplices whom he could reach, the Chevalier de Jars, was thrown into the Bastille and condemned to lose his head; he ascended the scaffold and there received his pardon. The Marquis de Hauterive, brother of the keeper of the seals,