The King was apprised of her demise as he was returning from Tarascon, where he had been visiting the Cardinal, who was then labouring under the severe indisposition which, five months subsequently, terminated in his own dissolution. For the space of four days Louis XIII abandoned himself to the most violent grief, but at the expiration of that period he suffered himself to be consoled; while Richelieu, who, even when persecuting the Queen-mother to the death, had always asserted his reverence for, and gratitude towards, his benefactress, caused a magnificent service to be performed in her behalf in the collegiate church.
Tardy were the lamentations, and tardy the orisons, which reached not the dull ear of the dead in the gloomy depths of the regal Abbey.
FOOTNOTES:
[225] MSS. de Colbert, Bibliothèque du Roi.
[226] Le Vassor, vol. ix. pp. 121-125. Le Clerc, vol. ii. pp. 352-357, Mézeray, vol. xi. pp. 500, 501.
[227] Hume, vol. v. p. 25.
[228] Rushworth, vol. v. p. 267.
[229] Le Vassor, vol. x. pp. 591, 592. Sismondi, vol. xxiii. pp. 457, 458. Le Clerc, vol. ii. pp. 495, 496. Rambure, MS. Mém. vol. xix. p. 518.
[230] In 1634, after the demise of the Marquis d'Ayetona, Philip of Spain conferred upon his brother Ferdinand, Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, the appointment of Governor-General of the Netherlands, which he held until his death, which took place at Brussels on the 9th of November 1641, when he was succeeded by Don Francisco de Mello, a nobleman who had rendered himself conspicuous by defeating the Maréchal de Guiche at Hannecourt. Subsequently, however, De Mello tarnished his military reputation at the famous battle of Rocroy, where he was utterly worsted by the young Duc d'Enghien, who had only just attained his twenty-first year, and who was afterwards known as the Great Condé.
[231] Mézeray, vol. xi. p. 540.