Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/93

Rh had read the relation of Fontrailles, the memoirs of the Duke de Bouillon, the note of Turenne, and the declaration of La Rochefoucauld? To our eyes, the accordance of these witnesses is decisive. The assertions of the Duke de Bouillon and of La Rochefoucauld are such that their authority can only be revoked by imputing to both, not an error merely, but a falsehood—and a falsehood at once gratuitous and odious. The queen used every effort to calm this new storm, and to persuade the king and Richelieu of her innocence. We have seen that in 1637 she did not hesitate to use the most solemn protestations and the most sacred oaths in the denial of that which she had afterwards been forced to confess. In 1642 she had recourse to the same means. She descended to humiliations as incompatible with a clear conscience as with her dignity and her rank. She lavished marks of attachment and interest on Richelieu; she affected a great horror of the ingratitude of the Grand-Equerry; she declared that she committed herself without reserve into the hands of the cardinal; that she only wished in future to be governed by his counsels, and that she would henceforth seek all her happiness in her children, whose education she abandoned to Richelieu. She wrote to him herself to inquire anxiously concerning his health, as she had formerly asked his hand and offered her own in token of eternal friendship, adding very humbly that he need not give himself the trouble of replying to her.