The result of this arrest was a total change in the aspect of the Court.  M. de Marillac[88] succeeded to the vacant superintendence of finance; the Comte de Schomberg was recalled to the capital, and made a member of the Privy Council; D’Ornano was liberated from the Bastille, restored to his position in the household of the Duc d’Anjou, and honoured with a marshal’s baton; while, to complete the moral revolution, Richelieu was appointed chief of the Council, and became, as the Queen-mother had anticipated, all-powerful over the weak and timid mind of the King under his new character of Minister of State.

Fully occupied as the Cardinal might have found himself by the foreign wars into which his ambition ere long plunged his royal master, he was nevertheless compelled to turn his attention to the intrigues of certain great ladies of the Court, which threatened internal dissension, and in which the two Queens ultimately became involved.  The young Duc d’Anjou, whose prepossessing manners and handsome person had rendered him universally popular, began about this time to awaken the distrust and jealousy of the King; a feeling which was heightened by the marked preference evinced by Marie de Medicis for her younger son.  The marriage of the Prince with the wealthy heiress of Montpensier, whose mother had espoused the Duc de Guise, had long been decided; but as Gaston had hitherto evinced the utmost indifference towards his destined bride, the subject had elicited little attention.  Suddenly, however, this indifference gave place to the most marked admiration; and it became evident that he was seriously contemplating an alliance with the Princess who had been designed for him by his father.  In so trivial and dissolute a Court as that of France at this period, it is needless to remark to how many fears and regrets such a resolution immediately gave birth; nor was it long ere two separate cabals were formed—­the one favouring, and the other seeking to impede, the marriage.  Passion and party-feeling overthrew every barrier of decency and dignity; and from this moment may be traced that insurmountable aversion which Louis XIII subsequently exhibited alike towards the Queen his wife and the Prince his brother.

It no sooner became apparent to the Court circle that the Princesse de Conti gave perpetual entertainments, in order to afford to Gaston constant opportunity for conversing with Mademoiselle de Montpensier, than the enemies of the Guises leagued together to inspire the King with their own fears, declaring that such an accession of influence as must accrue to that haughty house by an alliance with the heir-presumptive threatened the stability of the throne; representations which were rendered the more powerful by the extraordinary fact that the Duchesse de Joyeuse, who was herself the wife of a younger brother of the Guises, and the Marquise de la Valette, whose husband was a near relation of the Princesse de Montpensier, were both loud in