He was indeed in imminent danger. His enemies, the Queen-mother in chief, flattered themselves that his fate was at last in their hands. The King’s death was to be the signal for his arrest. In the meanwhile, Marie held counsel with her friends as to what should be done with him. All, according to tradition, held different opinions. Some condemned him to death, and among these, to his own undoing, was the Maréchal de Marillac. Some were for lifelong imprisonment; the mildest talked of perpetual exile. The story goes that Richelieu, the omniscient, always well served by spies and himself ready to play the part on occasion, listened to the debate through a chink hidden by tapestry. Further, that there came a day when each of his enemies met the fate he had recommended for the Cardinal.
Louis XIII. was well aware of the danger in which his death would leave his most distinguished servant. He respected Richelieu, even if he had not, in his own queer way, a kind of affection for him. At this crisis he sent for the Duc de Montmorency—with all his faults, one of the most generous and chivalrous of Frenchmen—and commended the Cardinal to his protection. It seems that Montmorency had already offered it, with a safe refuge in his government of Languedoc. These facts added bitterness to the terrible events of two years later.
Montmorency’s kindness was not needed. An internal abscess broke, and the King began to recover. But the Cardinal’s position was far from safe. During days of weary convalescence, the tender nursing of Louis’ mother and his wife gained for them a new and strong influence over his mind. Perhaps Queen Anne’s hatred of the Cardinal was even more thorough-going than that of her mother-in-law; and she had more power to injure him, if the malicious Court gossip of the day is at all based on facts. Had he really made love to her, in his awkward and pedantic fashion? It is only fair to say that M. Avenel, his most thorough and careful student, could find not one line of certain evidence for any of the stories of this kind that were told against him.
However, the voices of the two women prevailed so far that Louis, weak and exhausted, made them a kind of conditional promise. He could not dispense with his Minister while the war in Italy still went on. Let that be successfully ended—and then, possibly, he might see his way towards ending Richelieu’s career.
With this prospect in view, the Queen-mother waited patiently. When the news of peace arrived, the Court had just accomplished its journey, made chiefly by river, from Lyons to Paris, and it was noticed by the way that Her Majesty accepted the Cardinal’s company and respectful attention, treating him, apparently, with all her former confidence. It seemed to ignorant spectators only natural that she should celebrate the relief of Casale, the end of the war, with bonfires and fireworks: the Princesse de Conti hardly needed her frank explanation: “It is not at the Duke of Mantua’s good luck, but at the Cardinal’s ruin, that I rejoice.”
But the feux de joie blazed too soon. Marie found that her son, restored to health and victorious, was not quite ready to dismiss the genius to whom his kingdom owed so much. It was a bitter disappointment. Marie held her more violent feelings in check, listened perforce to the King’s assurances of Richelieu’s loyalty, and consented to meet him on the royal Council as usual. She was even prepared for a formal reconciliation with her “antienne créature,” to be sealed by receiving back Madame de Combalet into the service and favour from which she had been dismissed some months before.
But here Marie’s dissembling ended; and on November 9, 1630, with a burst of feminine fury, began that “grand orage de la Cour” which threatened to break Armand de Richelieu in full upward flight: the man already feared by Catholic Europe and the hope of the northern Protestants, with whose new leader, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, his diplomacy was even now allying France.
Madame de Combalet appeared that morning at the Luxembourg, and was received by the Queen-mother and the King in all the splendour of the new palace, with its silver-framed windows, its walls and ceilings decorated by great artists, already the admiration of Europe. Madame de Combalet herself was made for Courts, though she disliked and despised them. Still young and very handsome, her quiet dignity was at home anywhere: in the Carmelite convent from which all her uncle’s persuasion and authority had hardly withdrawn her; at the head of his house; or, as now, at the feet of frowning Royalty. On her knees she made the Queen a polite and respectful speech, begging to be restored to favour. At first Marie was stiff and cold; then she became angry; then, as rage got the better of her ponderous temperament, she forgot all her promises and poured out on the unlucky lady such a torrent of abuse and insult that Louis himself stepped forward, gave his hand to Madame de Combalet, and asked her to retire. A nervous, sensitive woman, it was no wonder that she left the presence in floods of tears.
The Cardinal, arriving by appointment for his own audience of reconciliation, met his niece at the door. The sight of her face was so sharp a warning that he hesitated, we are told, before passing on. In the meanwhile the Queen-mother was assuring her son that she had not changed her mind: her reception of the Cardinal would be all he could desire. This was an affair of State; the disgrace of a useless creature like la Combalet could signify to no one.
If Marie believed in her own intention, she reckoned without her passionate temper. It is true that she received the Cardinal with tolerable graciousness, but many minutes had not passed before her tone changed for the worse. “Peu à peu, la marée monte”: the rising tide of anger. Richelieu heard himself called an ungrateful, perfidious knave, a traitor to his King and country. The Queen-mother refused to sit with him any more on the Council. Along with Madame de Combalet, La Meilleraye, and Denys Bouthillier, he was roughly dismissed from her service—he still held his old charge of superintendent of her household. He might go, she said at last, and never willingly would she look upon his face again.