Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/53

Rh respectfully refused it, drawing back instead of approaching her. The Abbess of Val de Grâce followed the example of the queen; after having denied all, she confessed every thing. The king and Richelieu pardoned them, but forced the queen to sign a sort of schedule of conduct to which she should scrupulously conform. They provisionally interdicted her entrance to the Val de Grâce, as well as to every other convent, until the king should again give her permission to visit them; they forbade her to write except in the presence of her first maid of honor and first waiting maid, who should render an account of it to the king; or to address a single letter to a foreign country, by any direct or indirect means, under penalty of the forfeiture of the pardon which they had accorded her. Both the first and the last of these prohibitions related to the duchess. The king ordered his wife never to write to Madame de Chevreuse, "because this pretext," said he, "has been the cover of all the letters which the queen has written beside." He also commanded her neither to see Craft, an English gentleman and a friend of Montagu and the duchess, who was strongly suspected of being mixed up in all their intrigues, nor "any of the other agents of Madame de Chevreuse." We see, then, that it is always Madame de Chevreuse whom Louis XIII. and Richelieu regard as the root of all evil, and that they do not believe themselves sure of the queen until after having first separated her from her dangerous friend.

But how must this be done? Should they leave her at Tours? or arrest her? or banish her from France? It is curious to see what were the deliberations of the cardinal on this question, both with himself and with the king. He involuntarily renders striking homage to the power of Madame de Chevrense by proving by a series of reasons, somewhat scholastically deducted after his usual manner, that the worst