Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/64

50 The note, in fact, besought her to pay the cardinal what was due to him, and, if she could, "to settle the balance of the debt."

These last words, with many others in subsequent letters, show us that since her departure from France, Madame de Chevreuse, being unwilling to receive any thing from a foreign power, had exhausted all her resources, and that, not having the disposal of her property, she had been compelled to contract debts in London, which were constantly increasing, and which she knew not how to satisfy. Meanwhile, M. de Chevreuse, who had reduced his affairs to the most deplorable state, and whose sole hope of retrieving them lay in his wife's good sense and influence, had been continually interceding with the king and prime minister to permit her to return to France. The cardinal renewed his offer of pardon and abolition, which, he said, President Vignier had already taken the trouble to carry to her to the frontiers of Spain. Besides the general reasons for wishing her return which he himself has adduced, he had a very particular one just at this moment: he was negotiating with the Duke of Lorraine, whose military talents and small but excellent army disquieted him not a little, and he was more than ever anxious to draw him into a peace which would leave him free to unite all the forces of France against Spain and Austria. He had the greatest interest, therefore, in gaining the friendship of Madame de Chevreuse, whose influence was all-powerful over the mind of the duke, and who, as he was firmly persuaded, had already foiled the desired arrangement in 1637, and had it in her power to prevent it again. On her part, Madame de Chevreuse was weary of exile; she sighed for her chateau of Dampierre, and for her children,