absolute power.  I therefore determined to go there.  When I was within three leagues of La Capelle the Marquis de Vardes informed me that I could not enter that place, because he had given it into the hands of his father.  I leave you to imagine what was my affliction when I saw myself so deceived, and pursued by a body of cavalry in order to hasten me more speedily out of your kingdom.  God has granted that the artifices of the Cardinal should be discovered.  The very individuals who negotiated the affair have confessed that it was a plot of the Cardinal’s, in order to compel me to leave the country; an extreme measure which I dreaded above all things, and which he passionately desired.” [157]

In reply to this letter Louis XIII wrote thus:  “You will allow me, if you please, Madame, to say that the act which you have just committed, together with what has occurred for some time past, clearly discovers to me the nature of your intentions, and that which I may in future expect from them.  The respect which I bear towards you prevents me from being more explicit.” [158]

The other letters of the Queen-mother, although calculated to excite upon their publication a general hatred of the Cardinal, availed her personal cause as little as that which she had addressed to the monarch.  Her flight was blamed by all classes throughout the country; and not the slightest movement was made in her favour either by the Parliament or the people.  Richelieu was triumphant.  He had at length succeeded in throwing suspicion upon her movements, and in compelling her to share the odium which he had hitherto borne alone; and although she saw herself the honoured guest of the Princes with whom she had taken refuge, the unfortunate Marie de Medicis soon became bitterly conscious that she had lost her former hold on the affections of that France over which she had once so proudly ruled.  It is true that with the populace the ill-fated Princess yet retained her popularity, but she owed a great portion of this still-lingering affection to the general aversion of the masses towards the Cardinal; and while they mourned and even wept over her wrongs, they made no effort to enforce her justification.

On the invitation of the Prince d’Epinoy, Marie de Medicis, after a short sojourn at Avesnes, proceeded to Mons, where she was welcomed with salvos of artillery, and found all the citizens under arms in honour of her arrival; and it was in the midst of the rejoicing consequent upon her entry into that city, that she received the cold and stern reply of Louis, of which we have quoted a portion above, and to which she hastened to respond by a second letter, wherein she bitterly complained of the harshness with which she had been treated; and refused to return to France until the Cardinal should have been put upon his trial for “his crimes and projects against the state.”  The letter thus concludes:  “I am your subject and your mother; do me justice as a King, love me as a son.  I entreat this of you with clasped hands.”