He begins by denying most solemnly that before November 10 he had any knowledge that the Queen-Mother and Richelieu were at variance, except what he had gathered from “scraps of information,” and that he had no idea until some time afterwards that Marie had actually demanded from the King the disgrace of the Cardinal. He accompanied Louis to the Luxembourg on the morning of the 10th, as we have mentioned, but he assures us neither the King nor the Cardinal—whom he saw that evening—said a word to him about the stormy scene in the Queen-Mother’s cabinet, and that the matter was kept a profound secret between all the parties concerned.
“This quarrel,” says he, “was kept so secret on all sides that no one knew anything about it or suspected it.”
He then goes on to relate how on the evening of the 10th he accompanied the King to the apartments of Monsieur, from whom Louis had extracted a promise to be reconciled to the Cardinal.
“The King sent to summon the Cardinal, and, after saying a few words to his brother, presented the Cardinal to him, and begged him to love him and to regard him as his servant. This Monsieur rather coldly promised the King to do, provided that he [Richelieu] would comport himself towards him as he ought to do. I was present at this agreement, and afterwards, happening to be near the Cardinal, he drew me aside and said to me: ‘Monsieur complains about me, and God knows if he has reason to do so; but the beaten pay the forfeit.’ I said: ‘Monsieur, do not attach any importance to what Monsieur says. He only does what Puylaurens and Le Coigneux counsel him to do; and when you wish to hold Monsieur, hold him by means of them, and you will stop him.’ He said nothing to me afterwards about his quarrel;[134] and may God confound me if I even suspected it! After supper I went to visit the Princesse de Conti. I had previously attended the King’s coucher, and he did not give me any cause to suspect it. I inquired if he were leaving on the morrow;[135] and he told me that he was not. I found the Princesse de Conti in such ignorance of this affair, that not only did she not speak of it, but I shall certainly dare to swear that she knew nothing about it.
“On Monday, the 11th, St. Martin’s Day, I came early to the apartments of the King, who told me that he was returning to Versailles. I did not imagine for what reason. I had arranged to dine with the Cardinal, whom I had been unable to see at his house since his arrival [from Lyons], and I went there towards midday. I was told that he was not there, and that he was leaving that day to go to Pontoise. Up to then I did not suspect anything, nor did I even do so, when, having re-entered the Luxembourg and the Cardinal arriving there, I accompanied him up to the door of the Queen’s chamber, and he said to me: ‘You will no longer take any account of a disgraced man like myself.’ I imagined that he intended to refer to the bad reception which Monsieur had given him the preceding day. I intended to wait to go and dine with him; but M. de Longueville enticed me away to go and dine with Monsieur at M. de Créquy’s house, as he had invited me to do. While we were there, M. de Puylaurens said to me: ‘Well, it is certainly true this time that our people have quarrelled, for the Queen-Mother said openly to the Cardinal yesterday that she never wished to see him again.’ I was very much astonished at this news, which was shortly afterwards confirmed by M. de Longueville. I sent at once to the Princesse de Conti to beg her very humbly to send me news; but she swore to my man that this was the first that she had heard of it; and that she begged me to furnish her with particulars concerning it. I knew nothing about it, save that Madame de Combalet had taken leave of the Queen-Mother and that the King and the Cardinal had left Paris. In the evening Monsieur le Comte took me to the Queen-Mother’s, but she never spoke, except to the Queen and the princesses.
“Tuesday, the 12th.—I went to Chaillot, where I spent the whole day, and, on my return, I met Lisle, who told me that M. de Marillac had been deprived of the Seals and sent under an escort of the Guards to Touraine.
“Wednesday, the 13th.—M. de la Vrillière, returning at a gallop from Versailles; told me that M. de Châteauneuf had been appointed Keeper of the Seals, and, in the evening at the Queen-Mother’s, I saw M. de la Ville-aux-Clercs, who had come to inform her on behalf of the King.”
Now, Bassompierre is generally regarded as a singularly reliable chronicler, but we must remember that his Mémoires were written, or rather arranged and revised, during his imprisonment in the Bastille, and that there was always a by no means remote possibility that they might be impounded and placed under the eyes of Louis XIII and Richelieu. It was therefore manifestly to his interest to make out as good a case for himself as he could, and to pose as the victim of unfounded suspicions. When he declares that on the evening of the 10th he had no suspicion of what had taken place at the Luxembourg, and that he was positive that the Princesse de Conti knew nothing about it, he is probably speaking the truth. For it was not until the following morning that Louis XIII signed the despatch appointing the Maréchal de Marillac to the command of the army of Italy, and until the King had taken what appeared to her a decisive step against Richelieu, the Queen-Mother may well have refrained from speaking of the matter to anyone, even to so close a friend and confidante as the Princesse de Conti. But when he asks us to believe that until the afternoon of the 11th, by which time the affair must have been already known to half the Court, and, by his own admission, was known to Monsieur’s favourite Puylaurens and to the Duc de Longueville, both he and his wife were still in ignorance, and that when the Cardinal said to him: “You will no longer take any account of a disgraced man like myself,” he really believed that he was referring to
