A Ministry that depended on such a favourite was on a slippery slope indeed. The difficulties, at home and abroad, were enormous, and the wonder is that Richelieu and his colleagues, during their few months of uncertain power, were able to do so much.
Just at this time, when he was fighting the princes and parleying with Europe, the Abbé de Marolles gives a snapshot of him worth many formal portraits. The Abbé was then a young scholar at the university. His father, Claude de Marolles, a well-known soldier and courtier, once commanding the Swiss Guard, had joined the rebel princes and was attempting to negotiate between the Duc de Nevers and the commanders of the royal army.
M. Mangot, the Keeper of the Seals, sent for young Michel de Marolles and inquired of him whether he had received letters from his father or had had news from any of his father’s people. He warned him to hide nothing of the truth—“parce qu’il y alloit du service du roi.”
“There was M. de Luçon, in black, flung back (renversé) in a leathern chair, while M. le Garde des Sceaux stood up while speaking to me....” Presently, “M. de Luçon, who knew my father pretty well and esteemed him, rose up in his chair and said that in truth he did not believe that M. de Marolles had turned against the King’s service of his own free will, but that he was sorry he should have found himself engaged in so bad a cause. Then he added very low that I might retire, and that he did not advise me to remain in Paris.”
Such a warning, in those days, was not to be despised, and the young scholar was sent to his home in Touraine.
In spite of the political and military successes of the Ministers he was supposed to rule, the storm which overwhelmed the unlucky Concini was gathering all through that winter at the Louvre. Paris was careless and gay: after letting out her rage by sacking his house, she was content to enjoy the scurrilous songs and pamphlets, her favourite food, which rang through the streets and were sold by hundreds on the Pont Neuf.
“The year began joyously,” writes Bassompierre, a lighter-hearted witness than Pontchartrain, and a loyal courtier of Marie de Médicis. “Many fine assemblies, at which, besides gambling, feasting, and comedy, there was also good music. Time passed pleasantly at the Fair of Saint-Germain.”
The Maréchal and Leonora shared little in these amusements. He, at least, was troubled with a heavy presentiment of misfortune to come, and a present grief, the illness and death of their little daughter, caused them both “un cruel déplaisir.” The friendly soul Bassompierre, who had known him in his Florentine days, visited them in their sorrow on the very day of the child’s death. He found them together, “fort affligés,” in the little house close to the Louvre.
“I tried as well as I could to console or divert him, but the more I spoke the more he grieved, and weeping answered me nothing, except “Seignor, je suis perdu; seignor, je suis ruiné; seignor, je suis misérable.”
Bassompierre begged him to consider that he was a Marshal of France, and therefore that such lamentations, though worthy of his wife, were unworthy of him; adding in the candid fashion of the time that although he had lost an amiable daughter he had yet four nieces, by whose means he might ally himself with any four great French houses that he might choose—“and many other things which God inspired me to say.”