1635-38

Richelieu resolves to accomplish the disgrace of Puylaurens-Gaston proceeds to Paris during the Carnival, and his favourite is arrested in the Louvre-He is conveyed to Vincennes, where he dies-The Queen-mother and Madame take up their abode at Antwerp-Marie de Medicis solicits the protection of the Pope-Her letter is coldly received-She is accused by Richelieu of favouring the Spanish cause-She endeavours to dissuade Louis XIII from a war with Spain, and her arguments are haughtily repulsed-Her envoy is ordered to quit the capital-The Queen-mother once more appeals to the Sovereign-Pontiff, who declines to excite against himself the enmity of the Cardinal-Minister-Louis XIII pursues the war with Spain-Monsieur and the Comte de Soissons enter into a conspiracy to assassinate Richelieu-The Queen-mother joins the faction-The plot is betrayed –­Gaston returns to his allegiance-Marie de Medicis induces the Comte de Soissons to enter into a treaty with Spain-The intrigue is discovered by the Cardinal-The Queen-mother once more solicits an asylum in England-Charles I accedes to her request, and endeavours to effect her reconciliation with the French King-Richelieu determines Louis to reply by a refusal-Monsieur abandons his wife, who becomes dependent for her support upon the Spanish Government-Insignificance of Gaston-The Duchess of Savoy endeavours to effect the recall of her royal mother to France-The three Churchmen-Pregnancy of Anne of Austria-Renewed hopes of the Queen-mother-She is again urged to reside in Tuscany-She proceeds to Holland, and is magnificently received-The Prince of Orange intercedes in her behalf with the French King-Richelieu reiterates his wish that she should retire to Florence-The Dutch request her to leave the country-Marie de Medicis embarks for England-She is received at Gravesend by Charles I-Takes up her abode in St. James’s Palace-Meeting between the two Queens-Precarious position of the English King-The Court of the Queen-mother-The French Ambassador is instructed to abstain from all intercourse with the royal exile-A last appeal-Obduracy of the Cardinal-Richelieu, his sovereign, and his benefactress.

Richelieu, however, was far from intending that the Duc d’Orléans should remain unmolested in his retreat. Puylaurens was the first individual who had dared to dictate his own terms, and to enforce their observance; and although his Eminence had a great affection for his niece, he was by no means inclined to pardon the arrogance of her husband. An opportunity of revenge soon presented itself. The attractions of the Carnival proved too great for the prudence of Gaston, who accordingly proceeded to the capital, in order to share in its delights; and when, on the 14th of February 1635, he reached the Louvre, where he was expected to attend the rehearsal of a ballet, his favourite, by whom he was accompanied, was arrested in the royal closet by the captain of the guard, and conveyed to Vincennes. This act of severity was as unexpected at the moment as it remained unexplained in the sequel. Suffice it that Monsieur did not permit the disgrace of his chosen and trusted friend to interfere with his own amusement and gratification at so exciting a season, although he could not fail to feel that, once in the grasp of the Cardinal, the unhappy Puylaurens was doomed.

The result proved the truth of this apprehension; nobler and prouder lives than that of the spoiled favourite of Gaston had been sacrificed to the enmity of Richelieu. The tears and supplications of the heart-broken bride were disregarded; and four months after his arrest Puylaurens expired in his prison of, as it was asserted, typhus fever-the same disease to which, by an extraordinary coincidence, two former enemies of the Cardinal, the Marechal d’Ornano and the Grand-Prieur de Vendome, had both fallen victims when confined at Vincennes.

During this time the unhappy Queen-mother, who found herself abandoned on every side, had retired to Antwerp with the Princesse Marguerite, in order to escape the mortifications to which she was constantly subjected by the increasing coldness of her Spanish allies; and thence she wrote earnestly to the Sovereign-Pontiff entreating his interference to effect her reconciliation with the King, and begging him to exert his influence to avert the war with Spain which the Cardinal was labouring to provoke. The answer which she received to this despatch was cold and discouraging, but she still persevered; and in a second letter upon the same subjects she apprised his Holiness that she had appointed the Abbe de Fabbroni (one of her almoners) her resident at the Court of Rome; and had despatched another gentleman of her household to the Emperor of Germany to enforce a similar request. She, moreover, wrote to inform Mazarin, who was at that period nuncio-extraordinary in France, that she had addressed her son-in-law Philip of Spain for the like purpose, and requested him to deliver into the hands of Louis XIII a despatch by which his own was accompanied. Her selection of an agent on this occasion was, however, an unfortunate one, as Mazarin was devoted to the interests of the Cardinal-Minister, to whom he immediately transferred the packet, when the first impulse of Richelieu was to suppress it; but having ascertained that the Queen-mother had caused several copies to be made, and that she could not ultimately fail to secure its transmission, he endeavoured to weaken the effect of her remonstrances by accusing her of an attempt to corrupt the loyalty of the Duc de Rohan, and to induce him to adopt the interests of Spain.

This accusation sufficed to render Louis insensible alike to the entreaties and the arguments of his mother; and when Mazarin, in order to maintain appearances, requested a reply to the letter with which he had been entrusted, the King declined to furnish one, asserting that should he concede any answer to so seditious, so Spanish, and so hypocritical a missive, while the Queen was engaged in endeavouring to alienate one of his great nobles, he should be compelled to represent to her the crime of which she was guilty towards the state; and that the affectation with which she had dwelt upon the desire of the late King to maintain a good understanding with Spain was merely an expedient for vilifying his own government, indulging her hatred of the Cardinal, and seeking to create a rebellion among his subjects. He added, moreover, that when the Queen should see fit to act as became his mother, he would honour her as such; and that it was in order not to fail in his respect towards her that he forbore to reply to her communication, although the Nuncio was at liberty to do so in his name should he consider it expedient.

Nor was this the only mortification to which Marie de Medicis was subjected by her attempt to preserve the peace of Europe; for Richelieu, irritated by her interference, no sooner became aware that she had despatched the Abbe de Fabbroni to Rome, than he instructed the French Ambassador at that Court to complain to his Holiness of so unprecedented an innovation; and to remind him that the Queen-mother was not a sovereign, but a subject, and consequently did not possess the privilege of appointing a resident at any foreign Court; but must, on every occasion when treating with his Holiness, avail herself of the services of the accredited envoy of the King her son.

To this expostulation, however, Urban replied that the circumstance was not without precedent, as bishops had agents at the Papal Court; but, notwithstanding the apparent firmness with which he withstood the arguments of the Cardinal, it is asserted that he privately intimated to M. de Fabbroni the expediency of his immediate departure; a suggestion which was obeyed upon the instant.

The indignation of Marie de Medicis at this new insult was unbounded. Again she addressed the Sovereign-Pontiff, and inveighed bitterly on the persecution of which she was the victim; but beyond the mere expression of his sympathy the Pope declined all interference between herself and the minister, whose gigantic power rendered his enmity formidable even to the head of the Church. Once more the widow of one of the most vaunted sovereigns of France was compelled to bow in silence to the enmity of an individual whom she had herself elevated to influence and dignity; and while France was engaged in a war which not only riveted the attention but also involved the interests of the whole of Europe, history is silent as to her sufferings. All that can be gathered concerning her is the fact that the Spaniards, resenting the reverses to which they were subjected by the armies of Louis XIII, became less than ever inclined to sympathize in her sufferings when they discovered her utter helplessness; nor was it until the Duc d’Orléans and the Comte de Soissons entered into a conspiracy (in 1636) to overthrow the Cardinal, that she was once more involved in public affairs.

Meanwhile the piety of the Queen-mother had degenerated into superstition; she had applied to the Pope to authorize the canonization of an obscure nun of Antwerp; and, in accordance with the directions of Suffren her confessor, and Chanteloupe her confidant, she had abandoned herself to the most rigorous observances of her faith. But ambition was “scotched, not killed,” in the soul of Marie de Medicis; and she no sooner saw the Princes in open rebellion against the power of Richelieu than her hopes once more revived, and she made instant preparations to join their faction. The design was, however, betrayed, and thus rendered abortive; upon which Gaston, according to his wont, soon submitted to the terms dictated by the minister, and returned to his allegiance, abandoning M. de Soissons, who proved less complying, to the displeasure of the King; when (in 1637) the Queen-mother, whose hopes had been nearly extinguished by the defeat of the Spaniards at Corbie, and their retreat beyond the frontiers of Picardy, wrote to the Count, tendering to him the most advantageous offers, both from the Spanish monarch and Prince Thomas of Savoy, and offering personally to enter into the treaty. This proposition was eagerly accepted by M. de Soissons, and reciprocal promises of assistance and good faith were exchanged; while the Cardinal Infant, on his side, made a solemn compact with the exiled Queen that the Catholic King should conclude neither peace nor truce with France until Marie de Medicis and the Comte de Soissons were re-established in their rights; that the Queen-mother should reject all conditions of reconciliation until after the death or disgrace of Richelieu; that, should either one or the other event occur before the existing dissension between France and the House of Austria was adjusted, the Queen-mother, the Comte de Soissons, and all their French adherents should remain neutral during the space of four months, which were to be employed by all parties in endeavours to secure a general peace; that, in the event of its not being concluded at the expiration of that period, Marie de Medicis and Soissons should be free to effect their reconciliation with the French King, without incurring the blame of forfeiting their faith to Philip of Spain; that the last-named monarch should furnish two hundred and fifty thousand livres in ready money, and an equal sum a month later in property equivalent to specie; and that if the Comte de Soissons were compelled to retire from France, the King of Spain should afford him his protection, and furnish him with sufficient means to live according to his birth and rank.

A treaty of this nature, so formidable in its conception, and so threatening in its results, could not long remain a secret to the Cardinal-Minister; and accordingly he did not fail to be apprised of the intrigue before it had time to produce its effect, and resolved to conciliate the Comte de Soissons, even were it only for the present moment. Of Marie de Medicis he had long ceased to feel any apprehension, and he consequently made no effort to include her in the amnesty; a demonstration of contempt which so deeply wounded the exiled Princess that she resolved to despatch a messenger to the Court of London to solicit the interposition of Charles I. and Henriette in her behalf; but despite all her disappointments the Queen-mother still sought to obtain conditions which past experience should have sufficed to prove that Richelieu never would accord.

The English monarch had, indeed, yielded to the entreaties of a wife to whom he was at that period devotedly attached, and had consented to exert all his influence in favour of the unhappy Princess, who now saw herself abandoned by both her sons; but the state of his own kingdom was too unsettled to permit of his enforcing terms which he consequently perceived to be hopeless. Nevertheless he acceded to her request, and forwarded to the Court of France the document which was delivered to him by her envoy, but it produced no effect; and while every other state-criminal was reinstated in the favour of the King, on tendering the required submission, and conforming to the stipulated conditions, the Queen-mother found herself excluded from all hope of recall and all prospect of reconciliation.

Richelieu was aware that necessity alone had induced her to pronounce his pardon, and that her wrongs were too great ever to be forgotten. No wonder, therefore, that he shrank from a struggle which, should the voice of popular favour once more be raised in her behalf, might tend to his overthrow; and that struggle, as he well knew, could take place only on the soil of France. Her exile was his safety; and the astute Cardinal had long determined that it should end only with her life.

On every side the unfortunate Marie de Medicis saw herself surrounded by misfortune. Gaston, at the instigation of the Cardinal, had ceased to supply his neglected wife with the means of supporting, not merely her rank, but even her existence, and had left her dependent upon the generosity of the Spanish Government which he had so unblushingly betrayed. He had himself become a mere cypher in the kingdom over which he hoped one day to rule. He seldom appeared at Court; and when he was prevailed upon to do so, he was the obsequious admirer of Richelieu, and the submissive subject of the King. The Spaniards, since the departure of the heir-apparent to the French Crown, had ceased to evince the same respect towards the mother whom he had abandoned; and although they still accorded to her a pension that placed her above want, the munificence with which they had greeted her arrival had long ceased to call forth her gratitude. Her position was consequently desperate; and her only prospect of escaping from so miserable a fate as that by which she was ultimately threatened existed in the hope that should she voluntarily retire from Flanders, and place herself under the protection of England, she might yet succeed in enforcing her claims.

While she was still meditating this project, Christine, the widowed Duchess of Savoy, resolved to make a last effort to effect the recall of her persecuted mother to France; and for this purpose she despatched to Paris a Jesuit named Monod, who succeeded in establishing a friendship with Caussin, the King’s confessor, whom he induced to second the attempt. As both one and the other, however, believed success to be impossible so long as Richelieu retained his influence over the mind of the sovereign, they resolved to undermine his favour. Caussin, like all his predecessors, had great power over the timid conscience and religious scruples of his royal penitent, and the two Jesuits were well aware that through these alone could Louis be rendered vulnerable to their entreaties; while they were, moreover, encouraged in their hopes by the circumstance that the Cardinal-Minister had never evinced the slightest distrust of Caussin, whom he believed to be devoted to his interests, and that the latter consequently possessed ample opportunities for prosecuting his object.

At the close of the year, therefore, the attempt was made; and, as the Jesuit had anticipated, Louis listened with submission and even respect to his expostulations. “Your minister misleads you, Sire,” said his confessor, “where your better nature would guide you in the right path. He it is who has induced your Majesty to abandon your mother, who is not only condemned to exile, but reduced to the greatest necessity, and indebted to strangers for the very means of existence.”

The King was visibly moved by this assertion, but he remained silent, and suffered the ecclesiastic to proceed. Emboldened by this attention, Caussin did not scruple to declare that the Cardinal had usurped an amount of power which tended to degrade the royal authority; that the subjects of France were reduced to misery by the exorbitant taxation to which they were subjected; and that the interests of religion itself were threatened by Richelieu, who was affording help to the Swedes and the Protestants of Germany.

“Shake off this yoke, Sire,” concluded the Jesuit; “exert your royal prerogative, and dismiss the Cardinal-Duke from office. Be the sovereign of your own nation, and the master of your own actions. You will have a more tranquil conscience, and a more prosperous reign.”

“You are perhaps right, Father,” replied the King with emotion; “but you must give me time for reflection.”

Caussin obeyed, auguring well of his mission; but his self-gratulation was premature, for he had scarcely left the closet of his penitent when he was succeeded by the Cardinal, who, perceiving the agitation of the King, experienced little difficulty in extorting from him the subject of the conversation in which he had just been engaged; and a few moments sufficed to restore alike the complacency of Louis and his confidence in his minister.

There is sufficient evidence to prove that the French King never bestowed his regard upon Richelieu; as a boy he had evinced towards him an undisguised aversion which he never overcame, but he had learnt to fear him; the feeble mind of the monarch had bowed before the strong intellect of the minister; the sovereign could not contend against the statesman; the crown of France rested upon the brows of the one, but her destinies were poised in the hand of the other; and the strength of Richelieu grew out of the weakness of his master.

As a natural consequence of his imprudence Caussin was shortly afterwards arrested, and banished to Brittany; and the Cardinal no sooner ascertained the complicity of Monod than, despite the reluctance of the Duchess of Savoy to abandon a man who had hazarded his life in her cause, he was, in his turn, condemned to expiate his error by a rigorous captivity.

The unhoped-for pregnancy of Anne of Austria at this period once more revived the hopes of Marie de Medicis, who trusted that on such an occasion a general amnesty would necessarily supervene. She deceived herself, however; for although Richelieu professed the greatest desire to see her once more in France, he was in reality as earnest as ever in creating obstacles to a reconciliation so inimical to his own interests. In vain did the unhappy Queen-mother remind him of her advancing age and her increasing necessities; and plead that, whatever might have been her former errors, they must now be considered as expiated by seven weary years of exile; the minister only replied by expressions of his profound regret that the internal politics of the kingdom did not permit him to urge her recall upon the sovereign; and his extreme desire to see her select a residence elsewhere than within the territory of his enemies, where she was subjected to perpetual suspicion; while, should she determine to fix her abode at Florence, his Majesty was prepared to restore all her forfeited revenues, and to confer upon her an establishment suited to her rank and dignity.

As Richelieu was well aware, no proposal could be more unpalatable than this to the haughty Princess. Eight-and-thirty years had elapsed since Marie de Medicis, then in the full pride of youth and beauty, had quitted her uncle’s court in regal splendour to ascend the throne of France; and now-how did the heartless minister urge her to return? Hopeless, friendless, and powerless; with a name which had become a mockery, to a family wherein she would be a stranger. At Florence her existence was a mere tradition. All who had once loved her were dispersed or dead; no personal interest bound her to their survivors; and where long years previously she might have claimed affection, she could now only anticipate pity or dread contempt. The perpetual illnesses of the King, moreover, rendered her averse to such a measure; every succeeding attack had produced a more marked effect upon the naturally feeble constitution of Louis; the astrologers by whom she was surrounded continued to foretell his approaching death; and she yet indulged visions of a second regency, during which she might once more become all-powerful.

Nevertheless, she could not conceal from herself that by persistently remaining in a country at open war with France, she strengthened the hands of Richelieu without advancing her own interests; and although she felt that she could ill dispense with the generosity of her son-in-law Philip of Spain, who, even at a period when he frequently found himself unable to meet the demands of his army, still continued to treat her with a munificence truly royal, she resolved to withdraw from the Low Countries; and, accordingly, on the 10th of August, alleging that she was about to remove to Spa for the restoration of her health, she took her leave of the Court of Brussels; and, suddenly changing her route, proceeded to Bois-lé-Duc, where she placed herself under the protection of the Prince of Orange.

The arrival of the Queen-mother in Holland excited universal gratulation, as the Dutch did not for an instant doubt that it was a preliminary to a reconciliation with her son; and once more she found herself the object of universal homage. Municipal processions and civic banquets were hastily arranged in her honour; every hotel-de-ville was given up for her accommodation; burgomasters harangued her, and citizens formed her bodyguard; while so enthusiastic were the self-deceived Hollanders that even Art was enlisted in her welcome, and engravings still exist wherein her reception is commemorated under the most extravagant allegories; one of which represents the aged and broken-hearted Queen as the goddess Ceres, drawn by two lions in a gilded car. But her advent in Holland was, unhappily, not destined to ensure to her either the power or the abundance with which she was thus gratuitously invested by the pencil of the painter; for on her arrival at the Hague, when, in compliance with her entreaty, the Prince of Orange personally solicited her restoration to favour and her return to France, pledging himself in her name that she would never again interfere in the public affairs of the kingdom, nor enter into any cabal either against the state or the Cardinal-Minister, his application was totally disregarded by Louis XIII; and only elicited an official reply from Richelieu to the effect “that his Majesty could not receive the said lady and Queen into his realm, inasmuch as he had just reason to fear that she would continue under his name, and perhaps unknown to him, to create factions and cabals, not only in his own kingdom, but in those of his allies; but that should it please the said lady and Queen to retire to Florence, where the malcontents could not exert their influence over her mind, or injure either himself or his allies, his Majesty again offered her, as he had already done, a position at once more honourable and inure opulent than that with which she had contented herself in Flanders.”

This answer was, as Richelieu had intended that it should be, perfectly decisive to the Prince, who was aware that Marie de Medicis would have preferred death to a return to the banks of the Arno under her present circumstances; while the so-lately enthusiastic Hollanders, on ascertaining that the French Ambassador at the Hague had received orders not to wait upon or recognize their new guest, began to apprehend that her presence in their country might injure their interests with France; while, at the same time, the great outlay necessary for the maintenance of her establishment alarmed their economy; and it was consequently not long ere they respectfully intimated to her Majesty their trust that she would not prolong her sojourn among them.

This was a new outrage upon her dignity which struck to the very soul of the royal exile, who resolved no longer to defer her departure for England; and, accordingly, on the 19th of November she embarked for that country. Still, however, misfortune appeared to pursue her, for the winter proved one of great severity, and she narrowly escaped shipwreck, after having been tempest-tossed for several days. Her reception, nevertheless, compensated for this temporary suffering, as Charles himself travelled in state to Gravesend to escort her to London, where the most magnificent preparations had been made for her accommodation and that of her retinue in St. James’s Palace. The fifty apartments which were appropriated to her use had been arranged under the personal superintendence of her daughter Henrietta of England, and were replete with every luxury which could conduce to the well-being of the illustrious exile; while, as if to compensate alike to her persecuted mother and to herself for the tardiness of their meeting (the advanced pregnancy of the English queen having rendered it inexpedient that she should be exposed to the fatigue of travelling), she no sooner ascertained, by the trumpet-blast which announced its appearance, that the carriage containing her royal consort and his illustrious guest had entered the principal court of the palace, than she hastened, surrounded by her children, to bid them welcome; and as her unhappy parent descended from the coach supported on the arm of the King, Henriette threw herself upon her knees before her, and seizing her hands, pressed them convulsively to her heart, and bathed them with her tears. Marie de Medicis, tutored as she had been in suffering, was scarcely less moved; and thus the meeting between the august mother and daughter was most affecting: Henriette had so long yearned for the companionship of her kindred, while Marie de Medicis had, on her side, been for so great a period cut off from all the ties of family affection, that as they wept in each other’s arms, the one was unable to articulate a welcome, and the other to express her acknowledgments for the warm greeting which she had experienced.

Immediately on her arrival in England, Charles I. awarded to the exiled Queen a pension of a hundred pounds a day on the civil list; but her advent had, nevertheless, occurred at an inauspicious moment for the English sovereign, whose resources were crippled, and who abstained from levying subsidies upon his subjects in order not to assemble a Parliament; while he moreover dreaded that the presence of his royal mother-in-law, with her numerous train of priests, would tend to exasperate the spirit of the people, who were already greatly excited against the Roman Catholics.

Nor were these his only causes of anxiety, as many of the French malcontents who had fled their country in order to escape the enmity of Richelieu had selected London as their place of refuge, relying upon the friendship of Henriette (a circumstance which had increased the coldness that already existed between the two Courts); and these at once rallied round Marie de Medicis as their common centre. Among these illustrious emigrants the most distinguished were the Duchesse de Chevreuse and the Ducs de Soubise and de la Valette, all of whom were surrounded by a considerable number of exiles of inferior rank; and as the Queen-mother saw them gathered about her, she easily persuaded herself that their voluntary absence from France was a convincing proof of the general unpopularity of her own arch-enemy Richelieu. Her personal suite, moreover, included no less than two hundred individuals; and thus the palace of the Stuarts presented the anomalous spectacle of a French Court, where the nobles of a hostile land, and the priests of a hostile faith, held undisturbed authority, to the open dissatisfaction of the sturdy citizens of London. Murmurs were rife on all sides; and the Queen-mother was regarded as a harbinger of misfortune. Henriette herself was obnoxious to the Puritans, but they had been to a certain degree disarmed by her gentleness of demeanour, and the prudence and policy of her conduct; she was, moreover, the wife of the sovereign, and about to become the mother of a prince; but Marie de Medicis possessed no claims on their forbearance, and they did not hesitate to attribute to her views and designs which she was too powerless to entertain.

At this period the Queen-mother was subjected to the mortification of learning that M. de Bellievre, the ambassador-extraordinary of her son at the Court of England, had received stringent instructions to abstain from all demonstration of courtesy towards her person; and even to avoid finding himself in her presence, whenever the etiquette of his position would permit of his absenting himself from the royal circle; a command which he so scrupulously obeyed, that although, in her anxiety to enlist him in her cause, she had more than once endeavoured to address him, she had constantly failed; until Lord Holland, at her entreaty, on one occasion contrived to detain him in the great gallery at Whitehall, where Marie de Medicis entered accompanied by the King and Queen.

As the royal party passed near him, Bellievre bowed low, without looking towards the mother of his sovereign. Escape was impossible; and he consequently remained silent and motionless.

“Monsieur l’Ambassadeur,” said a well-remembered voice, “I wish to exchange a few words with you.”

Charles and Henriette moved on; Lord Holland withdrew; and the Queen-mother at length found herself face to face with the French envoy, who had no alternative but to assume an attitude of profound respect, and to extricate himself from this unexpected difficulty as best he might.

Marie de Medicis was painfully agitated. Her future fate in all probability hinged upon this long-coveted interview, and some seconds elapsed before she could utter a syllable. She continued standing, although her emotion compelled her to lean for support upon a table; and Bellievre, courtier though he was, could scarcely have looked unmoved upon the wreck of pride and power thus placed before him. Years and sorrows had furrowed the lofty brow, and dimmed the flashing eyes, of the once beautiful Tuscan Princess, but she still retained all that dignity of deportment for which she was celebrated on her arrival in her adopted country. She was a fugitive and an exile, but she was yet every inch a Queen; and her very misfortunes invested her with an interest which no true and honest heart could fail to feel.

“Sir,” she said at length, “I have for some time past endeavoured by every means in my power to impress upon the Cardinal de Richelieu my earnest desire to return to France by his interposition; but all my attempts have been useless. I have received no reply.”

“Madame,” interposed Bellievre, “I humbly entreat of your Majesty to permit me to explain that although I have the honour to be the representative of my sovereign at this Court, I am not authorized to appear in that character towards yourself. It is possible that your Majesty has the intention of entrusting me with some message, in which case I entreat of you to excuse me when I decline to undertake its transmission. I have express orders not to interfere in anything connected either with the person or with the concerns of your Majesty.”

“You have probably not been forbidden to hear what I desire to say,” exclaimed the Queen, with a burst of her former spirit.

“I confess it, Madame,” conceded the ambassador; “but since I was not commanded to do so, I beg that I may be forgiven should I decline to obey you in the event of your requiring me to make any written communication from yourself to the King my master.”

“Enough!” said Marie de Medicis, with a gesture of impatience. “Listen. The afflictions which I have undergone since I took refuge in the Low Countries have inspired me with very different feelings from those with which I left Compiègne. I beg you to inform the Cardinal that I entreat of him to deliver me from the miserable position in which I now find myself, and from the bitter necessity of soliciting my bread from my sons-in-law. I desire to be once more near the King. I do not ask for either power or authority; all that I require is to pass the remainder of my days in peace, and in preparing myself for death. If the Cardinal cannot obtain the permission of the King for my return to Court, let him at least request that I may be allowed to reside in some city within the kingdom, and be restored to the possession of my revenues. I offer to dismiss from my household all such individuals as may be obnoxious to his Majesty, and to obey him in all things without comment. His orders and the advice of the Cardinal shall regulate my conduct. This is all that I require you to communicate to the latter; as I fear that those to whom I have hitherto addressed myself have been deficient either in courage or in will to perform the errand entrusted to them.”

Bellievre hesitated for a moment. There was a tearful tremor in the voice of the persecuted Princess which it required all his diplomacy to resist; but he soon rallied. “Madame,” he replied calmly, “your Majesty shall have no reason to visit the same reproach on me, for it is with extreme regret that I protest my utter inability to serve you on this occasion.”

“I fully comprehend the value of your frankness, M. de Bellievre,” said the Queen-mother, as she raised herself to her full height, and fixed upon him her dark and searching eyes. “Such is the usual style of ambassadors. They decline to undertake certain commissions, but they nevertheless report all that has taken place. I had experience of that fact more than once during my regency.”

Having uttered these biting words, Marie de Medicis turned from the discomfited courtier, and approached the window to which Charles I. and his Queen had retired; followed, however, by Bellievre.

“Your Majesties must permit me,” he said firmly, “to repeat in your presence what I have already declared to the mother of my sovereign. I dare not undertake the mission with which she desires to honour me. You will, without doubt, remember, Madame,” he added, turning towards Henriette, whose emotion was uncontrollable, “that you have on several occasions commanded me to write in your name in behalf of the Queen-mother; and that I have always entreated of your Majesty not to insist on my obedience, in consequence of the stringent orders which I have received to avoid all interference in an affair of which the King my master desires to reserve the exclusive management.”

“I do not deny it, sir,” said Henriette with dignity; “but since my royal brother will not consent to listen to any solicitations in favour of the Queen my mother, my husband and myself have conceived that the only alternative which remains to her is to compel an explanation with his ministers, with the participation of the several European Courts in which she may see fit to reside.”

Again M. de Bellievre declared his utter inability to meet the wishes of the persecuted Marie; upon which Charles, coldly bending his head to the French envoy, offered a hand to each of the agitated Queens, and led them from the gallery.

Despite all his professions of neutrality, however, Bellievre, as Marie de Medicis had predicted, lost no time in communicating all the details of the interview to Richelieu, who forthwith dictated a private despatch, to which he obtained the signature of Louis, to repulse the demand of the Queen-mother. The Cardinal had passed the Rubicon. He could no longer hope that his persecuted benefactress would ever again place confidence in his protestations, or quietly permit him to exert the authority which he had so arrogantly assumed; and thus he readily persuaded the weak monarch-who had, moreover, long ceased to reason upon the will of his all-powerful minister-that the return of the ill-fated Marie to France would be the signal of intestine broil and foreign aggression. In vain did Henrietta of England address letter after letter to her royal brother, representing the evil impression which so prolonged a persecution of their common parent had produced upon the minds of all the European princes; the fiat of Richelieu had gone forth; and the only result obtained by the filial anxiety of the English Queen was a series of plausible replies, in which she was complimented upon her good intentions, but at the same time requested not to interfere in the private arrangements of the King her brother.

Desirous, nevertheless, of escaping the odium of so unnatural and revolting an abandonment of his royal benefactress, the Cardinal caused a council to be assembled to consider her demand, and to deliberate upon the measures to be adopted in consequence; declaring his own intention to maintain a strict neutrality, and instructing the several members to deliver to him their opinions in writing. All had, however, been previously concerted; before the meeting assembled Richelieu informed his coadjutors that the King had voluntarily declared that no reliance was to be placed upon the professions of the Queen-mother, as she had on many previous occasions acted with great dissimulation, and that it was not in her nature long to remain satisfied with any place in which she might take up her abode; that she could not make herself happy in France, where she was both powerful and honoured; that she had been constantly discontented in Flanders, although she had adopted that country as her own; that she had lived in perpetual hostility with the Duc d’Orléans after having induced him to quit the kingdom; and that she was even then at variance with the Princesse Marguerite, although she had countenanced her marriage with Monsieur in opposition to the will of the sovereign; that she had not gone to Holland without some hostile motive to himself and his kingdom; and that she was already becoming weary of England.

Moreover, as the Cardinal further informed them, Louis XIII had himself asserted that since her Majesty had failed to content herself with the exalted position which she had at one time filled in France, it was not to be anticipated that she would rest satisfied with that which, should she return, she must hereafter occupy; but would once more become a rallying point for all the malcontents who were formerly her adherents.

Thus prompted, the members of the council readily came to the conclusion “that the King could not with safety decide upon the proposition of the Queen-mother until the establishment of a solid peace had placed the intentions of that Princess beyond suspicion, being aware of her intelligence with the enemies of his kingdom; and that, from the same motive, as well as from the apprehension that she might be induced to make an ill use of her revenues, they were of opinion that they should only be restored to her on the condition that she should fix her future residence at Florence.”

This was, as we have already shown, the invariable expedient of Richelieu, who was aware that the prospect of the Queen-mother’s return to France was not more repugnant to himself than the idea of retiring in disgrace and dishonour to her birthplace had ever been to his unhappy victim; and the proposal was accordingly repeated at every opportunity, because the minister was aware that it would never be accepted; while it afforded, from its apparent liberality, a pretext for casting the whole odium of her prolonged exile upon Marie de Medicis herself.

In order to carry out the vast schemes of his ambition, the Cardinal had, at this period, reduced the monarch to a mere cypher in his own kingdom; but he could not, nevertheless, blind himself to the fact that Louis XIII, who was weak rather than wicked, had frequent scruples of conscience, and that during those moments of reflection and remorse he was easily influenced by those about him; while, whenever this occurred, he evinced a disposition to revolt against the ministerial authority which alarmed the Cardinal, and compelled him to be constantly upon his guard. After having throughout fifteen years successfully struggled against the spread of Calvinism, and that remnant of feudal anarchy which still lingered in France; humbled the House of Austria, his most dreaded rival; and, in order to aggrandize the state he served, sowed the seeds of revolution in every other European nation, and thus compelled their rulers to concentrate all their energies upon themselves, he was now constrained to descend to meaner measures, and to enact the spy upon his sovereign; lest in some unlucky moment the edifice, which it had cost him so mighty an amount of time and talent to erect, should be overthrown by a breath.

True, Marie de Medicis was an exile and a wanderer; the royal brothers, through his means, alienated in heart; discord and suspicion rife between the monarch and his neglected wife; while even the first passion of the King’s youth had been quenched by Richelieu’s iron will. The affection of Louis XIII for Mademoiselle de la Fayette-an affection which did equal honour to both parties from its notorious and unquestioned propriety, but which has been too frequently recorded to require more than a passing allusion-had been crossed and thwarted; the fair maid of honour loved and respected Anne of Austria as much as she feared and loathed the Cardinal-Minister; and she was accordingly an obstacle and a stumbling-block to be removed from his path. She also was immured in a cloister, and was consequently no longer dangerous as a rival in the good graces of the King; yet still Richelieu was far from tranquil; and the petit coucher of the King was to him a subject of unceasing apprehension. He was well aware that Louis was as unstable as he was distrustful; and thus a new mistress, a new favourite, or even a passing caprice, might, when he was totally unprepared for such an event, suffice to annihilate his best-considered projects.

Poor Marie! Under such circumstances as these all her efforts at conciliation were vain; and it is probable that she would have sunk under the conviction, had not her failing courage been sustained by the affectionate and earnest representations of her daughter, Henrietta of England.