Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/95

Rh her return to France. I assured her Majesty that she should be satisfied on this point."—"I have never seen a truer or more sincere satisfaction than that which the queen felt on hearing what I said to her from Monseigneur. She protests that she not only does not wish Madame de Chevreuse to approach her, but that she is resolved, for her own safety, to suffer no person to advise her to the neglect of the most trifling part of her duty."

Behold Madame de Chevreuse, then, fallen, as it seems, to the lowest depth of misfortune. Her situation was deplorable; she suffered in every chord of her heart; no hope remained to her of again seeing her country, her beautiful chateau, her children, her daughter Charlotte. Drawing almost nothing from France, she was at the end of resources, of loans, and of debts. She learned how hard it is to mount and to descend the staircase of the stranger; to endure, by turns, the vanity of his promises and the haughtiness of his disdain. And that no bitterness might be spared her, the one who at least owed to her a silent fidelity, had openly ranged herself on the side of fortune and of Richelieu. She thus passed several most unhappy months, with no other support than her courage. Suddenly, on the 4th of December, 1642, the redoubted cardinal, victorious over all his enemies without and within, and absolute master of the king and the queen, succumbed while at the zenith of power. Louis XIII. was not long in following him; but, forced in spite of himself to confide the regency to the queen, and to appoint his brother lieutenant-general of the kingdom, he imposed on them a council, without whose consent they could do nothing, and in which should rule, in the capacity of prime minister, the man of all others the most devoted to the system of Richelieu, his particular friend, his confidant and his creature, the Cardinal Jules Mazarin. Even this capricious measure, which, through