"Well then," pursued the King, "return to the Cardinal de Richelieu, and tell him from me to come here upon the instant. He will find me an indulgent master."
M. de la Valette required no second bidding. Richelieu had concealed himself in a cottage near the palace, awaiting a favourable moment to retrieve his tottering fortunes, and he hastened to obey the welcome summons. The results of this interview even exceeded the hopes of the minister; and before he left the royal closet he was once more Prime Minister of France, generalissimo of the armies beyond the Alps, and carried in his hand an order signed by Louis for the transfer of the seals from M. de Marillac to his own friend and adherent Châteauneuf; together with a second for the recall of the Maréchal de Marillac, who had only on the previous day been appointed to the command of the army in Italy.[139]
One obstacle alone remained to the full and unlimited power of the exulting minister, who had not failed to perceive that henceforward his influence over the sovereign could never again be shaken; and that obstacle was Marie de Medicis. Louis, even while he persecuted and thwarted his mother, had never ceased to fear her; and the wily minister resolved, in order the more surely to compass her ultimate disgrace, to temporize until he should have succeeded in thoroughly compromising her in the mind of the King; an attempt which her own impetuosity and want of caution would, as he justly imagined, prove one of little difficulty after the occurrences of the day.
Thus his first care on returning to his residence at Ruel was to address a letter to the Queen-mother, couched in the following terms:
"Madame--I am aware that my enemies, or rather those of the state, not satisfied with blaming me to your Majesty, are anxious to render you suspicious of my presence at the Court, as though I only approached the King for the purpose of separating him from yourself, and of dividing those whom God has united. I trust, however, through the divine goodness, that the world will soon learn their malice; that my proceedings will be fully justified; and that innocence will triumph over calumny. It is not, Madame, that I do not esteem myself unfortunate and culpable since I have lost the favour of your Majesty; life will be odious to me so long as I am deprived of the honour of your good graces, and of that esteem which is more dear and precious to me than the grandeurs of this earth. As I owe them all to your liberal hand, I bring them and place them voluntarily at the feet of your Majesty. Pardon, Madame, your work and your creature.
RICHELIEU." [140]
Such was the policy of the astute and heartless minister. Only a few hours had elapsed since he had overthrown all the most cherished projects of Marie de Medicis, sown dissension between herself and her son, proved to her that her efforts to struggle against his superior influence were worse than idle; and now he artfully sought to excite her indignation at his duplicity, and to compel her to reprisals which would draw down upon herself all the odium of their future estrangement. He well knew that by such a measure as that which he adopted, he must render her position untenable; for while on the one hand he overwhelmed her with professions of deference and respect, on the other he wrenched from her all hope of power, wounded her in her affections, and deprived her of the confidence of her adherents.[141] Bassompierre attempted to disguise his mortification at the mistake of which he had himself been guilty by designating the 11th of November on which these extraordinary events took place as the "Day of Dupes," while the Queen-mother--whose great error had been that, instead of accompanying Louis to Versailles, and thus preventing all private intercourse with the minister, she had yielded to her vanity and remained to listen to the congratulations of the courtiers--when she learned the ruin of all her hopes, passionately exclaimed that she had only one regret, and that one was that she had not drawn the bolt across the door leading to her oratory, in which case Richelieu would have been lost without resource.
Aware of his unpopularity with both nobles and people, the Cardinal considered it expedient to signalize his restoration to power by conferring certain favours upon individuals towards whom he had hitherto only manifested neglect and dislike. On the 19th of November he accordingly conferred the dignity of Marshal of France upon the Duc de Montmorency and the Comte de Thoiras; and on the 30th of the succeeding month he restored the Duc de Vendôme to liberty, although upon conditions degrading to a great noble and the son of Henri IV; while he purchased the favourites of Monsieur by large sums of money, and still more important promises. The latter concession at once restored the good humour of Gaston d'Orléans, who forthwith proceeded to Versailles to pay his respects to the King, by whom he was graciously received, after which he paid a visit to the Cardinal; but Marie de Medicis and her royal daughter-in-law remained inflexible, and Louis so deeply resented their coldness towards his minister that even in public he scarcely exchanged a word with either.[142] For this mortification they found, however, full compensation in the perfect understanding which had grown up between them, based on their mutual hatred of Richelieu; for while the Queen-mother dwelt upon his ingratitude and treachery, Anne of Austria was no less vehement in her complaints of his presumption in having dared to aspire to the affection of the wife of his sovereign.
As day succeeded day the two royal ladies had increased subject for discontent. The disgrace of the Marillacs had deeply wounded Marie de Medicis, who at once perceived that the blow had been aimed at herself rather than at the two brothers; and that the real motive of the Cardinal had been to weaken her party: a conviction which she openly expressed. Still she remained, to all appearance, mistress of her own actions, and retained her seat in the Council; but it was far otherwise with the young Queen, whose affection for her brother having been construed by the minister into a treasonable correspondence with the Spanish Cabinet, she was banished to her private apartments; while she had the annoyance of seeing Mademoiselle de Hautefort exercise the most unlimited influence over the mind of the King, and perpetually accompany him on his excursions to St. Germain and Fontainebleau, not only as an invited but also as an honoured guest. Meanwhile Gaston, who was aware of the empire which he exercised over his mother, and who sought to harass the Cardinal, was assiduous in his attentions to the two Queens; a persistence which so alarmed Richelieu that he did not hesitate to insinuate to his royal master that the Prince was more devoted to Anne of Austria than was consistent with their relative positions; and thus he succeeded in arousing within the breast of Louis a jealousy as unseemly as it was unprovoked. The continued sterility of the Spanish Princess and the utter estrangement of the august couple, while it irritated and mortified the young Queen, served, however, to sustain the hopes of Marie de Medicis, who looked upon her younger son as the assured heir to the crown, and supported both him and Anne in their animosity to Richelieu.
Two powerful factions consequently divided the French Court at the close of the year 1630; Louis XIII, falsifying the pledge which he had given to the Queen-mother and Monsieur, had abandoned his sceptre to the grasp of an ambitious and unscrupulous minister, whose adherents, emulating the example of their sovereign, made no attempt to limit his power, or to contend against his will; while, with the sole exception of the King himself, all the royal family were leagued against an usurpation as monstrous as it was dishonouring. The sky of the courtly horizon was big with clouds, and all awaited with anxiety the outburst of the impending tempest.