The arrest and subsequent execution of the ill-fated Cinq-Mars and his friend M. de Thou, together with the cowardly policy of Monsieur, who no sooner found his treason discovered than he once more wrote to demand his pardon from the King, and to renew his promises of future loyalty and devotion,[237] are circumstances of such universal notoriety that we shall not permit ourselves to enlarge upon them.  It must suffice, therefore, to say that this new peril had merely served to increase alike the bodily suffering and the irascibility of Richelieu, who, even on the very brink of the grave, was indulging in schemes of vengeance.  He saw on all sides only enemies armed against his life; and by a supreme effort, to which a less vigorous intellect than his own must have proved unequal, he rallied all the failing energies of nature to pay back the universal debt of hatred which he was conscious that he had incurred.

Such was the temper of his mind while the unfortunate Queen-mother was yet dreaming of a reconciliation with her son, and an old age of honour in her adopted country, through the agency of Rubens; but her still sanguine spirit had betrayed her into forgetting the fact that the dying tiger tears and rends its victim the most pitilessly in its death-agony; and this was the case with the rapidly sinking minister, who was no sooner apprised of the arrival of the painter-prince in the capital than he despatched a letter to Philip of Spain to urge him to demand the presence of Rubens on the instant at Madrid, and to detain him in that city until he should hear further from himself.  The request of so dangerous an adversary as Richelieu was a command to Philip, who hastened to invite the illustrious Fleming to his Court with all speed, upon an affair of the most pressing nature; and when Rubens would have lingered in order to fulfil a mission which he considered as sacred, he was met by the declaration that Louis desired to defer the audience which he had already conceded until after the return of the Maestro from the Spanish capital.  With a heavy heart Rubens accordingly left Paris, aware that this temporary banishment was the work of the vindictive Cardinal, who was thus depriving his unhappy benefactress of the last friend on earth who had the courage to defend her cause; but as he drove through the city gates he was far from anticipating that his freedom of action was to be trammelled for an indefinite period, and that he was in fact about to become the temporary prisoner of Philip IV.

Nor was the persevering cruelty of Richelieu yet satiated; he knew by his emissaries that the end of Marie de Medicis was rapidly approaching, but he was also aware that through the generous sympathy of Charles of England and the King of Spain she was still in the receipt of a sufficient income to ensure her comparative comfort; and even this was too much for him to concede to the mistress whom he had betrayed; thus, only a few months elapsed ere the pensions hitherto accorded to the persecuted Princess were withheld by both monarchs[238]; who, in their terror of the formidable Cardinal, suffered themselves to overlook their duty and their loyalty to a woman and a Queen, and their affection towards the mother of their respective consorts.