Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/94

80 Anne went still further; she set no limits to her dissimulation and falsehood; in this extreme peril, she went so far as to turn against the courageous friend who had devoted herself for her. She would have embraced her as a liberator, had fortune declared itself in her favor; vanquished and disarmed, she abandoned her. As she had protested her horror of the conspiracy which had failed, and of her two imprudent and unfortunate accomplices, who mounted the scaffold without naming her, so, seeing the king and Richelieu incensed against Madame de Chevreuse, and determined to repulse the new attempts made by her family to obtain her recall, the queen, far from interceding for her former favorite, zealously joined with her enemies; and in order to mask her real sentiments, and to seem to applaud what she could not prevent, she asked as a special favor that the duchess should be kept far from herself and even from France. "The queen," writes Chavigny, the minister of foreign affairs to Richelieu, "the queen asked me if it were true that Madame de Chevreuse would return; then, without waiting for an answer, she said that she would be sorry to see her again in France, for she now understood her true character; and she commanded me to entreat his Eminence in her behalf, that, if he wished to do any thing for Madame de Chevreuse, it should be done without permitting