An hour or two subsequently Marie de Medicis accorded an audience to the Duc de Sully, who had, with considerable difficulty, been induced by M. de Guise to present himself at the palace, to offer his condolences to the young sovereign and his august mother;[37] and he was accordingly introduced into the private apartment of the Queen, where he found her surrounded by the ladies of her household, and absorbed in grief.  As he was announced she burst into a passion of tears, and for a time was unable to welcome him; but having at length succeeded in controlling her emotion, she desired that the King should be brought to her; and he had no sooner appeared than she pointed out to him the Duc de Sully, when the young monarch threw himself into his arms, and loaded him with the most affectionate caresses.

“You do well, my son,” sobbed Marie, as she remarked the emotion of the boy; “you must love M. de Sully, who was one of the best and most faithful servants of the King your father, and who will, I trust, continue to serve you with the same zeal.” [38]

The interview was a lengthy one, and the urbanity of the Queen produced so powerful an effect upon the mind of the finance minister that he ceased to apprehend any diminution of his influence, and accordingly sent to countermand the return of the Duc de Rohan, who had already advanced a day’s march towards the capital.[39]

Meanwhile the Dowager-Princesse de Conde had hastened to inform her son of the assassination of the King, and to urge his instant return to the capital; a summons to which he replied by forwarding letters of condolence both to the King and the Regent, containing the most earnest assurances of his loyalty and devotion alike to their personal interests and to those of the nation; and declaring that he only awaited their commands to return to Court, in order to serve them in any manner which they might see fit to suggest.

The Comte de Soissons, who had left Paris only a few days before the coronation of the Queen, for the reason elsewhere stated, and who had retired to his estate near Chartres, was invited by a messenger despatched by Marie to return without delay to the capital, where the interests of the state required his presence.  This command he prepared to obey with alacrity; but his zeal was greatly damped when, on arriving at St. Cloud, he ascertained that the Queen had been already recognized by the Parliament as Regent of the kingdom, and that her dignity had been publicly confirmed by the young sovereign.  On first receiving this intelligence his rage was without bounds; he even questioned the legality of an arrangement of this description made without his sanction, he being, during the absence of the Prince de Conde, the first subject in France after the Queen herself; and then, moderating the violence of his expressions, he complained that by the precipitation of the Parliament, he had been deprived of the privilege of signifying his assent to the nomination,