It is probable, however, that, even despite the avowed abandonment of the Prince de Conde, Concini might have hesitated to quit his post had not the affair of Picard convinced him that his prosperity had reached its climax.  Even the Queen-mother, indignant as she expressed herself at the insult to which he had been subjected, betrayed no inclination to resent it; and so entire was his conviction that his overthrow was at hand, that there can be no doubt but that thenceforward he began seriously to meditate a return to his own country.[240]

Nearly at the moment in which the Marechal d’Ancre was thus unexpectedly compelled to leave Paris, his untiring enemy the Duc de Longueville made himself master of the three towns of Peronne, Roye, and Montdidier in Picardy, which, by the Treaty of Loudun, had been secured to Concini.  Publicly the Princes blamed this violation of the treaty, and exhorted the Duke to relinquish his conquests; but being in reality delighted that places of this importance, and, moreover, so immediately in the neighbourhood of the capital, should be in the possession of one of their own allies, they privately sent him both men and money to enable him to retain them.[241]

Meanwhile Marie de Medicis made no effort to compel the restitution of the captured towns; the insult to which Concini had been subjected by Picard remained unavenged, and the Italian could no longer conceal from himself that he had outlived his fortunes.  It is scarcely doubtful, moreover, that, with the superstition common to the period, the prediction of Luminelli had pressed heavily upon his mind; as from that period he became anxious to abandon the French Court, and to retire with his enormous wealth to his native city.  It was in vain, however, that he sought to inspire Leonora with the same desire; in vain that he represented the prudence of taking the initiative while there was yet time; the foster-sister of Marie de Medicis peremptorily refused to leave Paris, alleging that it would be cowardly to abandon her royal mistress at a period when she was threatened alike by the ambition of the Prince de Conde and the enmity of De Luynes, whose power over the mind of the young sovereign was rapidly making itself felt.

At this precise moment a new and grave misfortune tended to augment the eagerness of the Marechal d’Ancre to carry out his project.  His daughter, through whose medium he had looked to form an alliance with some powerful family, and thus to fortify his own position, was taken dangerously ill, and in a few days breathed her last.  His anguish was ungovernable; and while his wife wept in silence beside the body of her dead child, he, on the contrary, abandoned himself to the most vehement exclamations, strangely mingling his expressions of fear for his future fate with regret for the loss which he had thus sustained.