This reluctance on her part to conclude a reconciliation, of which she had hitherto expressed herself so desirous, excited the surprise and apprehension of the Court, who sought a solution of the mystery from the Bishop of Lucon; but the wily Richelieu was careful not to betray that they were his own counsels which regulated the conduct of the Queen-mother.  He had well weighed his position, and he felt that it was not yet sufficiently assured to enable him to oppose his influence to that of De Luynes.  He aspired to a seat in the Council, and in order to attain it he must render himself more necessary to the favourite than he had hitherto been enabled to do; a fact to which he was keenly alive.  Should the mother and the son meet at that moment, he was aware that the excitable temperament of Marie could not fail to betray her into the power of De Luynes, and with her would fall his own fortunes; whereas time must necessarily calm her first exultation and render her more tenacious of her power.  Thus, then, Richelieu jealously watched every change in her mood, excited her distrust, aggravated her animosities, and, finally, convinced her that her strength existed only in opposition to the King’s will.  Marie, naturally suspicious, lent herself readily to this specious reasoning; she had sufficient knowledge of the character of her son to feel that his eager desire to obliterate the past was produced by no feeling of affection towards herself, but might simply be attributed to his anxiety to weaken a faction which had become formidable, and by depriving her adherents of a pretext for opposing his authority, to rid himself of a danger which augmented from day to day.  Too readily the prey of her passions, Marie de Medicis exulted in this conviction; and had Louis and his ministers been wise enough to accept her reluctance as a refusal to return to Court, and abandoned all attempts to change her determination, it is probable that this simulated indifference, and the powerlessness to which it must ere long have reduced both herself and her followers, would have caused her immediate compliance; but, bent upon compelling her obedience, they, by successive endeavours to overcome her disinclination to resign the comparative independence to which she had attained, only played into the hands of the astute Bishop, by strengthening her resolution to resist.

Shortly after the departure of the Princes of Savoy, the Capuchin Father Joseph du Tremblay,[36] the confidential friend of Richelieu, was ordered to proceed in his turn to Angouleme, and to endeavour to induce Marie de Medicis, with whom the courtly monk was known to be a favourite, to resume the position to which she was entitled as the widow of one sovereign and the mother of another; and as a preliminary step, to meet the King according to his expressed wish, before his return to the capital.  This was, however, only another false step on the part of De Luynes, as the reverend father felt by no means disposed to thwart