As he grew older Louis became still more attached to his favourite.  His discontented spirit made him irritable under every disappointment, and vindictive towards those by whom his wishes were opposed:  he detested alike explanation and remonstrance, and from De Luynes he never encountered either the one or the other.  Under the remonstrances of his mother he became sullen; to the arrogant assumption of the Princes and the Marechal d’Ancre he opposed an apathetic silence which caused them to believe that it was unfelt; and it was only to De Luynes that he poured forth all his indignation, that he complained with bitterness of the iron rule of Marie, the insolence of his nobles, and the ostentatious profusion of the Italian:  contrasting the first with his own helplessness, the second with the insignificance to which he was condemned, and the last with the almost penury to which he was compelled to submit.

No Prince had ever a more attentive or a more interested auditor.  The enemies of the young Louis were also those of his favourite; for, as before remarked, the grandson of the reverend canon of Marseilles was alike vain and ambitious, and consequently inimical to all who occupied the high places to which he himself aspired.  Moreover, the powerlessness and poverty of the young monarch necessarily involved those of his follower; and thus both by inclination and by interest De Luynes was bound to share the antipathies of his master.

Like all favourites, moreover, he soon made a host of personal adversaries; while, as these were far from suspecting the height to which he was ultimately destined to attain, they took little pains to dissemble their dislike and contempt of the new minion; and thus, ere long, De Luynes had amassed a weighty load of hatred in his heart.  To him it appeared that all the great dignitaries of the kingdom, although born to the rank they held, were engrossing honours which, possessed as he was of the favour of the sovereign, should have been conferred upon himself; but the especial antipathy of the arrogant adventurer was directed against the Queen, the Marechal d’Ancre, and the President Jeannin.  To account for his bitter feeling towards Marie de Medicis, it is only necessary to state that, blinded by his ambition, he had dared to display for the haughty Princess a passion which was coldly and disdainfully repulsed; and that he had vowed to revenge the overthrow of his hopes.[194]

His hatred of Concini is as easily explained; it being merely the jealousy of a rival favourite.  The Italian was to the mother of the King precisely what De Luynes was to the King himself; and as Marie possessed more power than her son, so also was her follower more richly recompensed.  Still, however, the game was an unequal one, of which the chances were all in his own favour; for the Marechal was playing away the present, while his adversary was staking upon the future.  The President Jeannin was also, as we have stated, especially distasteful to De Luynes, as he made no secret of his dissatisfaction at the frivolous existence of the young sovereign, and his desire that he should exchange the boyish diversions to which he was addicted for pursuits more worthy of his high station; while at the same time he exhibited towards the favourite an undisguised disdain which excited all the worst passions of its object.