Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/87

Rh Bouillon? If so, it was the only one in which she was not concerned. It is very doubtful whether she was not in the secret, as well as Queen Anne, whose correspondence with Cinq-Mars and Monsieur cannot be contested. While conducting herself guardedly towards Louis XIII. and his minister, Anne of Austria had not abandoned her former sentiments nor even her designs, and she may even have been compromised in the affair of the Count de Soissons, if we may believe these notable words from Alexandre de Campion to Madame de Chevreuse, dated the 15th of August, 1641: "Have no fear of the letters which speak of that person for whom of all others you have the greatest devotion; M. de Bouillon and I have burned all which were in the count's casket." The queen certainly knew of the plot of Cinq-Mars and consented to it. Perhaps she was ignorant of the treaty with Spain, but in all else she acted in concert with the conspirators against the cardinal. La Rochefoucauld affirms this several times as a thing in which he had been concerned. "The eclat of the influence of M. le Grand," says he, "awakened the hopes of the malcontents: the queen and Monsieur joined themselves to him, and the Duke de Bouillon and several persons of rank followed their example. M. de Thou came to me on behalf of the queen to inform me of her alliance with M. le Grand, and to tell me that she had promised him that I would be among her friends." The Duke de Bouillon declares that the queen was firmly leagued with Monsieur and with the Grand-Equerry, and that she herself demanded his aid: "The queen, who had been persecuted by the cardinal in so many ways, doubted not that if the king should die, he would seek to take her children from her in order to procure for himself the regency." She sought the Duke de Bouillon