“Cousin”—­thus ran the letter of the once-powerful widow of Henri IV to her implacable enemy—­“the Sieur Bouthillier having assured me in your name that my sorrows have deeply affected you, and that, regretting you should for so long a time have deprived me of the honour of seeing the King, your greatest satisfaction would now be to use your influence to obtain for me this happiness, I have considered myself bound to express to you through the Sieur Laleu, whom I despatch to the King, how agreeable your goodwill has been to me.  Place confidence in him, and believe, Cousin, that I will ever truly be, etc. etc.”

In addition to this humiliation, the heart-broken Queen at the same time gave instructions to her messenger to declare to the King that, “having learned that his Majesty could not be persuaded of her affection for his own person so long as she refused to extend it to the Cardinal, he was empowered to assure his Majesty that the Queen-mother, from consideration for the King her son, would thenceforward bestow her regard upon his minister, and dismiss all resentment for the past.”

Both the verbal and written declarations addressed to Louis on this occasion were, as will at once be evident, a mere matter of form, and observance of the necessary etiquette.  It was not the monarch of France whom Marie de Medicis sought to conciliate, but the Cardinal-Duke, who, as she was conscious, held her fate in his hands.  It was before him, consequently, that she bowed down; it was to his sovereign pleasure that she thus humbly deferred; for she felt that the long-enduring struggle which she had hitherto sustained against him was at once impotent and hopeless.  Alas! she had, as she was fated ere long to experience, as little to anticipate from the abject concession which she now made, bitter as were the tears that it had cost her.  The most annoying impediments were thrown in the way of her messenger when he solicited an audience of the sovereign, nor was he slow in arriving at the conviction that his mission would prove abortive.  Nevertheless, as the command of Marie de Medicis had been that he should also deliver the letter to Richelieu in person, and, as he had already done in the case of the King, add to its written assurances his own corroborative declarations in her name, and even communicate to him the offer of Chanteloupe to retire to a monastery for the remainder of his life in the event of his exclusion from the treaty, he was bound to pursue his task to its termination, hopeless as it might be.[206]

When the envoy of the Queen-mother had delivered his despatches, and fulfilled the duty with which he had been entrusted, the embarrassment of the Cardinal became extreme.  That the haughty Marie de Medicis should ever have compelled herself to such humiliation was an event so totally unexpected on his part that he had made no arrangements to meet it; and it appeared impossible even to him that, under the circumstances,