Cardinal de Richelieu

by Eleanor C. Price

FROM A MINIATURE AT SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM

He made her write and sign her confession, and then caused the King to bestow a formal forgiveness, not sweetened by a list of requirements as to her future conduct. She was to visit no convents and to write no letters without the King’s permission, her maids and her ladies-in-waiting, especially “Fillandre, première femme de chambre,” who had charge of her writing-desk, being set as spies and gaolers over her. Not much wonder that the lively little niece, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, visiting Chantilly in that disturbed month of August, found the Queen in bed, ill with fear and worry.

For this was not the end of it. The Cardinal was dissatisfied, still suspecting concealment. La Porte in his prison was once more threatened with torture. A spy was sent to him—one of the Queen’s officers, gained over by Richelieu and Laffemas. He brought a supposed message from the Queen to La Porte, commanding him to tell all he knew. But if Anne’s enemies were clever and resourceful, so also were her friends. The romantic courage of Mademoiselle de Hautefort and of the Chevalier de Jars, himself confined in the Bastille, had found a way of conveying a letter to La Porte, warning him of the extent of the Queen’s confessions. He was thus prepared to tell the same story—all of which seems to justify Richelieu’s suspicion.

Madame de Motteville says that the remembrance of those summer weeks at Chantilly “faisoit horreur à la Reine.” She was within an ace of following her mother-in-law’s example in a flight from France. Mademoiselle de Hautefort and the Prince de Marcillac—afterwards Duc de la Rochefoucauld—were ready to ride off with her to Brussels. Her life at the Court had become unendurable. Richelieu brought forward the terrors of the law in the person of Chancellor Séguier, who not only examined the Queen “like a criminal,” but made a thorough search at the Abbey of the Val-de-Grâce, where her letters and papers were supposed to be hidden. Either because the Abbess was fearless and loyal, or because there was nothing to find, the Chancellor found no papers of a later date than 1630.

So the storm passed over. Richelieu could prove nothing; the King and Queen were reconciled; and the only consequence was a fresh exile for Madame de Chevreuse, who rode for her life from Tours and crossed the Pyrenees into Spain.

Mademoiselle de Hautefort remained in favour for two more years; the Queen valued her friendship, and the King, after his final parting with Mademoiselle de la Fayette, had returned to his old love; she became a lady-in-waiting, with the title of Madame and other privileges. But Richelieu was still afraid of her. Rather cautiously and slowly, from 1637 till the end of 1639, he was working for her ruin. In the Queen’s very household he had a spy, long unsuspected and exceedingly clever at her odious trade, Mademoiselle de Chémerault, a young maid-of-honour, an intimate friend of Madame de Hautefort. From the most private interior of the Court, this girl reported every word and deed to a Madame Maline, who conveyed the information direct to Richelieu in letters which still exist, a mine of ancient gossip written in the curious jargon used by him in his secret notes. Everybody has a nickname: the Cardinal himself, in these notes, is sometimes Amadeo, sometimes l’Oracle; the King and Queen are Céphale and Procris; Madame de Hautefort is l’Aurore, Madame d’Aiguillon Vénus, Mademoiselle de la Fayette, la Délaissée, Mademoiselle de Chémerault herself, le bon Ange. These letters warned the Cardinal of all the loves and hatreds, the private and public discontents and desires, which moved the Queen and her friends, and kept him in touch with every detail of the stormy yet affectionate intercourse between Madame de Hautefort and the King. Her empire, if only intermittent, was dangerous; the more so, because she was known to be on friendly terms with the Comte de Soissons and with Monsieur.

Richelieu believed in “the expulsive power of a new affection.” Young Henry d’Effiat, Marquis de Cinq-Mars, was brought to Court by him with the definite object of distracting the King from the society of Madame de Hautefort. This plan being on the way to succeed, the Cardinal took advantage of one of the King’s journeys, when the lady was not there to plead her own cause, to accuse her of being as dangerous an intrigante as Madame de Chevreuse, adding that he could no longer endure this fighting in the dark, and that Louis must choose between Madame de Hautefort and himself. With some show of regret, the King yielded. Madame de Hautefort was banished from Court, and retired to her grandmother’s country estates. Four years later, when Richelieu and Louis XIII. were dead, she was recalled and honoured among the old friends who had been faithful to the Regent in adversity.

The Queen’s own troubles and humiliations came to an end in September 1638. On the 5th—Richelieu’s birthday and also the date on which he became Cardinal, Duke, and Peer—the long-wished-for Dauphin was born at Saint-Germain. All France rejoiced; the towns, especially Paris, held high festival, with singing of Te Deum, firing of cannon, ringing of bells, keeping open house for all comers. The Cardinal, who was in Picardy, wrote rapturous letters to the King and Queen.

“I hope and believe that God has given Monseigneur le Dauphin to Christendom to appease its troubles, and to bring to it the blessing of peace. I vow to him, from his birth, the same passionate devotion I have always had for the King and for your Majesty, whose faithful servant I am and shall be eternally....”

The Cardinal’s rejoicing was sincere. In the birth of the future Louis XIV. he rightly saw the triumph of his own policy as well as the saving of France from the danger, which the King’s weak health made imminent, of falling into the hands of Gaston d’Orléans and his crew. Two years later, in 1640, the birth of Philippe was an additional security.