Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/73

Rh happy which enabled me to do so; and my only motive in serving you is regard for your interest, being for ever, Madame, your most devoted servant,

", May 26, 1639."

This new counsel heightened the anxiety of Madame de Chevreuse. She transmitted this second letter to Richelieu as she had done the first, to show him that she was not detained by trivial causes, and to explain to him her uncertainty. She also declared that she would not depart till she had seen and heard the Marquis de Ville whom the Duke of Lorraine had announced to her.

Henri de Livron, Marquis de Ville, was a Lorraine nobleman, full of wit and courage, and devoted to his country and his prince, who having been made prisoner, thrown into the Bastille, and afterwards released by Richelieu, had rejoined the Duke Charles in the Netherlands. He came to London in the first part of the month of August, 1639, and used every effort to persuade Madame de Chevreuse to break with the cardinal. The duchess wished that he should explain himself in the presence of Boispille, and that the latter should render an account of the interview to Richelieu. The Marquis de Ville continued inflexible in his assertions, and asked nothing better than to draw up and sign the following deposition:—"A person named Lange, having accompanied me last winter from Paris as far as Charenton, said to me that his knowledge of the interest which I had for the service of Madame de Chevreuse forced him to tell me that she was lost if she returned to France at present. Pressing him to tell me what he knew positively on the subject, after having first extracted a promise from me that I would not speak of it to any one but his Highness of Lorraine or Madame de Chevreuse, he said that it was but two days since the cardinal, in speaking of Madame de Chevreuse to M. de Chavigny, showed much dissatisfaction because she