Volume III Part 11 (1/2)
”I am here, Madame,” replied Richelieu with perfect composure; ”and I am here because your Majesties were speaking of me.”
”You are wrong, Monseigneur,” murmured the King.
”Nay, Sire,” persisted the minister, turning towards Marie de Medicis; ”your august mother will, I am convinced, own that such was the case.”
”You are right, Sir,” admitted the Tuscan Princess, no longer able or anxious to restrain her resentment; ”we were speaking of you, and you had just cause to dread the results of such a conversation. We were expatiating upon your treachery, your ingrat.i.tude, and your vices; and the subject was a copious one.”
”Ah, Madame!” expostulated Richelieu, as he fell upon his knees before his irritated mistress. ”What have I done to forfeit your favour? How have I sacrificed your esteem?”
”_Miserabile! miserabile_!” cried the Queen-mother; ”dare you ask _how_?
But it is idle to bandy words with such as you; _teme mia vendetta_!”
”At least, Madame, suffer M. le Ministre to justify himself,” stammered out Louis; ”he may perhaps convince you that you have wronged him.”
”Wronged him!” echoed Marie with a contemptuous gesture. ”Even his ready eloquence must prove powerless beside the experience of the past.
Henceforward there can be no trust or fellows.h.i.+p between the widow of Henry the Great and her discarded servant.”
”In that case, Sire,” said the Cardinal, rising from his abject posture at the feet of the Queen-mother, and throwing himself at those of the King, ”I can no longer offer my unworthy services to your Majesty, as it is not for me to contend against the will of my royal mistress.”
Terrified by this threat, which renewed his sense of utter helplessness, Louis faintly endeavoured to intercede in behalf of the man upon whom he had so long leant for support; but Marie impetuously interposed.
”You have heard my decision, Sir,” she said haughtily; ”and it is now for you to choose between your mother and your valet.” [137]
Finding that all interference on his part must prove ineffectual, the King suddenly rose, remarking that it was late, and that as he had resolved to return to Versailles he had no time to lose. Richelieu, who had not yet recovered sufficient self-possession to entreat a continuance of his intercession, remained motionless as he left the room; while the indignation of the Queen-mother at so undignified a retreat rendered her equally unable to expostulate; and meanwhile Louis, delighted to escape from all partic.i.p.ation in so dangerous a contention, sprang into the carriage which was awaiting him, and beckoning his new favourite M. de Saint-Simon to take his place beside him, set off at full speed for the suburban palace where he had taken up his temporary abode.
After the departure of the King, Richelieu made a fresh effort to overcome the anger of Marie de Medicis; he still knelt humbly before her, he supplicated, he even wept, for the Cardinal was never at a loss for tears when they were likely to produce an effect upon his hearers; but all was vain. The Queen-mother turned from him with a contemptuous gesture; and gathering her heavy drapery about her, walked haughtily from the room.
The eyes of the prostrate minister followed her as she withdrew with a glance in which all the evil pa.s.sions of his soul were revealed as if in a mirror. He believed himself to be utterly lost; and when he reached the Pet.i.t Luxembourg, where he had lodged since his arrival in the capital, he gave orders that his carriages should be packed, and immediately proceed to Pontoise, on their way to Havre de Grace, where he had hastily determined to seek an asylum.[138] In a few hours all was in movement in the vicinity of his residence. A long train of mules laden with what many a.s.serted to be chests of treasure, first took the road under the escort of a body of military, with strict orders not to halt in any village lest they should be pillaged; and meanwhile the Cardinal hurriedly terminated his more important arrangements and prepared to follow.
In this occupation he was interrupted by his fast friend the Cardinal de la Valette, by whom he was earnestly urged to forego his resolution, and instead of flying from the capital, and thus ensuring the triumph of his enemies, to hasten without loss of time to Versailles, in order to plead his cause with the King. This advice, coupled as it was with the judicious representations of his brother-prelate, once more awakened the hopes of Richelieu, who stepped into a carriage which was in waiting, and with renewed energy set off at all speed from Paris. This day had been one of intense suffering for the Cardinal; who, in addition to the personal humiliation to which he had been exposed, had ascertained before his intrusion into the royal closet that Louis had, at the entreaty of the Queen-mother, already signed a letter in which he conferred upon the Marechal de Marillac the command of his army and the direction of public affairs in Italy; and that a courier had moreover left Paris with the despatch. Nevertheless, yielding to the arguments of MM. de la Valette and de Chateauneuf, Richelieu readily consoled himself by recalling the timid and unstable character of Louis, and the recollection of the eminent services which he had rendered to France.
Siri even a.s.serts that before the Court left Lyons an understanding had been come to between the King and his minister, and that the exile of Marie was then and there decided.
Be this as it may, however, it is certain that all parties believed in the utter overthrow of Richelieu; and while he was yet on his way to Versailles, the ballad-singers of the Pont Neuf were publicly distributing the songs and pamphlets which they had hitherto only vended by stealth; and the dwarf of the Samaritaine was delighting the crowd by his mimicry of _Maitre Gonin_. At the corners of the different streets groups of citizens were exchanging congratulations; and within the palace all the courtiers were commenting upon the approaching triumph of M. de Marillac, whose attachment to the interests of the Queen-mother and the Duc d'Orleans had rendered him popular not only with the bulk of the people, but also with the Parliament. Already were the presidents and councillors of the law-courts discussing the charges to be brought against the fallen minister in order to justify his dismissal; while the foreign amba.s.sadors were equally alert in writing to acquaint their several courts with the overthrow of Richelieu and the supremacy of the Queen-mother.
The _salons_ of Marie de Medicis were crowded. All the great n.o.bles who had hitherto haunted the antechambers of the Cardinal, and awaited his pleasure as humbly as that of the sovereign himself, now swarmed in the gilded galleries and stately halls of the Luxembourg; feathers waved and jewels flashed on every side; the wand of an enchanter had pa.s.sed over the Court, and the metamorphosis was complete. In the centre of this brilliant throng stood Marie de Medicis, radiant with joy, and holding the young Queen by the hand; while Monsieur took up his station a few paces from them, laughing and jesting with his favourites.
Heaven only knows what hopes and projects were formed that day--how many air-built castles were erected which in a few brief hours were fated to vanish into nothingness. Even Ba.s.sompierre, whose courtly tact had never hitherto deserted him, was blinded like the rest; and he, who had hitherto so a.s.siduously paid his court to the Cardinal that he appeared to have forgotten the time when he was devoted heart and soul to the fortunes of the Queen-mother, suffered five days to elapse before he found leisure to bend his steps towards the Pet.i.t Luxembourg; an omission which he was subsequently destined to expiate in the dungeons of the Bastille.
Louis, meanwhile, had reached Versailles with his equerry and favourite, M. de Saint-Simon, to whom he bitterly inveighed against the violence of his mother; declaring that he could not dispense with the services of Richelieu, and that he should again have to contend against the same humiliations and difficulties which he had endured throughout the Regency. As the ill-humour of the King augmented, Saint-Simon privately sent to inform the Cardinal de la Valette of the undisguised annoyance of his Majesty, who was evidently prepared to revoke the dismissal of Richelieu should he be urged to do so; and that prelate, acting upon the suggestion, lost no time in presenting himself before the monarch.
”Cousin,” said Louis with a smile, as M. de la Valette entered the apartment, ”you must be surprised at what has taken place.”
”More so, Sire, than your Majesty can possibly imagine,” was the reply.
”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 Chateauneuf; together with a second for the recall of the Marechal 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 compa.s.s 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.