by exciting him against your friends, and ere long they will excite him against yourself.  Your authority is only precarious, and must cease whenever such may be the will of the sovereign.  He will be easily persuaded to annul it, for we know how eagerly youth pants for power; and should his Majesty see fit one day to remove to St. Germain, and to command his principal officers, both Frenchmen and foreigners, no longer to recognize your rule, what will be your position?  Even I myself, whose devotion to your Majesty is above suspicion, should be compelled to take my leave, humbly entreating your permission to obey the orders of the King.  Judge therefore, Madame, if such must inevitably be the case with those who are deeply attached to your royal person, what may be the bearing of the rest.  You would find yourself with your hands empty after a long regency.”

Marie, however, refused to be convinced.  She had become so habituated to the passive obedience of her son that she could not bring herself to believe that he would ever venture to resist her will; and thus she rejected the wholesome advice of those who really desired her own welfare and that of the country; and increased the exasperation of Louis and his followers by lavishing upon Concini and his wife the most costly presents, in order to reconcile them to their enforced separation from herself.[275]

The profuse liberality of the Queen-mother to her favourites sealed their death-warrant, as every increase of their already almost fabulous wealth only strengthened the determination of De Luynes to build up his own fortunes upon the ruin of those of his detested enemy; but after the first burst of resolution which we have recorded, Louis had once more relapsed into vacillation and inertness.  He still wept, but he no longer threatened; and it became necessary yet further to excite his indignation and hatred of Concini, in order to induce him to follow up the design which he had so eagerly formed against his liberty.

Means were not wanting.  The young King was reminded by those about him of the niggardly spirit in which the Italian had supplied his wants during his boyhood, after having obtained the sanction of the Regent to regulate the expenses of his little Court.  How often he had been compelled to ask as a favour that which was his own by right, while Concini was himself daily risking thousands of pistoles at the gaming-table, all of which had been drawn from the royal treasury!  How insolently the Marechal had, upon an occasion when he was engaged at billiards with his Majesty, requested the royal permission to resume his plumed cap, and had replaced it on his head before that permission was expressed; with a hundred other trifling but mortifying incidents which made the blood of Louis boil in his veins, and placed him wholly in the power of his insidious associates.[276]