“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 compass 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.

Thus his first care on returning to his residence at Ruel was to address a letter to the Queen-mother, couched in the following terms: 

“Madame—­I am aware that my enemies, or rather those of the state, not satisfied with blaming me to your Majesty, are anxious to render you suspicious of my presence at the Court, as though I only approached the King for the purpose of separating him from yourself, and of dividing those whom God has united.  I trust, however, through the divine goodness, that the world will soon learn their malice; that my proceedings will be fully justified; and that innocence will triumph over calumny.  It is not, Madame, that I do not esteem myself unfortunate and culpable since I have lost the favour of your Majesty; life will be odious to me so long as I am deprived of the honour of your good graces, and of that esteem which is more dear and precious to me than the grandeurs of this earth.  As I owe them all to your liberal hand, I bring them and place them voluntarily at the feet of your Majesty.  Pardon, Madame, your work and your creature.  RICHELIEU.” [140]