Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/63

Rh might plunge me. It has been necessary for me to deprive myself of the consolation of assuaging my sDrrows by telling them to your Majesty, until the present hour, when I can complain to her of my unhappy fortune, hoping that her protection will shelter me from the anger of the king and the dislike of the cardinal. I dare not say this to his Majesty myself, and do not tell it to M. the cardinal, being assured that your generosity will do so, and thus make that agreeable which in me would be importunate. The knowledge of the kindness of your Majesty assures me that she will willingly exercise it on this occasion, and that she will employ her charity to prove to me what I already know, that she is still herself. Your Majesty will learn from the letters of the King and Queen of Great Britain the honor they do me. I do not know how better to express myself than by telling your Majesty that it merits her acknowledgment. I trust that she will approve of my residence in their court, that this will not render me deserving of any harsh treatment, and that I shall not be refused the property which the authority of your Majesty and the care of M. the cardinal had procured me before my departure, and which I demand of my husband. In which I supplicate your Majesty to protect me, so that I may soon be in possession of the just rights for which I am hoping."

At the same time that she claimed her property, Madame de Chevreuse thought of acquitting a debt which weighed heavily on her pride. At Tours she had really been forced to accept the money sent her by Richelieu, but, as we have already said, she accepted it simply as a loan; and under cover of the official letter to Queen Anne, which we have just given, she enclosed a little confidential note, designed for the queen alone, from which we see that the Queen of France had herself formerly borrowed money from her ex-superintendent.