Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/55

Rh tenderness for a woman who joined in her person in the highest degree, those two gifts so rarely found united—beauty and courage?

He spoke to her as if he were still her friend; he reminded her of the leniency which he had shown her in the affair of Châteauneuf; and, knowing her to be at that time almost destitute, he sent her money. The duchess made much ceremony about receiving it; she would not take it as a gift, but as a loan; and the only favor which she asked of the cardinal was that of assistance in the just suit which she was prosecuting in order to separate her property from that of her husband—a suit which she gained some time afterward. The questions which were addressed to her, she answered without embarrassment and with her usual firmness. Unable to deny that she had proposed to the queen to return in disguise to Paris, since they had seized the letter in which the queen had declined the proposition, she declared that she had had no other desire in this than to have the honor of saluting her sovereign; that the urgency of her affairs had also called her to Paris; and that, far from thinking to animate the queen against the cardinal, her intention had been to employ all the influence which she might have possessed over her in disposing her favorably towards the prime minister; and, paying Richelieu in his own coin, she gave him back his professions of friendship with interest; but, in her heart, she distrusted him. It was in vain that the envoys of Richelieu, the Marshal La Meilleraie, the Bishop of Auxerre, and above all the Abbé du Dorat, treasurer of Sainte-Chapelle, with whom she was on friendly terms, said every thing that they could imagine to persuade her of the sincerity of the cardinal; she only saw in this assiduous friendliness a skilful plan designed to lull her vigilance, and to inspire her with a false security. She thought of her friends, the Chevalier de Jars and Châteauneuf, both languishing in the dungeons of Richelieu, and resolved to brave all dangers rather than share their fate.