my fortune, and I pushed it forward as long as I saw the wind favorable.  So soon as I felt it turning, I thought about beating a retreat and enjoying in peace the large property we have acquired.  It is my wife who is opposed to this desire.  At every crack of the whip we receive from Fortune, I continue to urge her.  God knows whether warnings have been wanting.  My daughter’s death is the last, and, if we do not heed it, our downfall is at hand.”  Then he quietly made out an abstract of all his property, amounting to eight millions, with which he purposed to buy from the pope the usufruct of the duchy of Ferrara, and leave his son, besides, a fine inheritance.  But his wife continued her opposition; it would be cowardly and ungrateful, she said, to abandon the queen:  “So that,” cried he, “I see myself ruined without any help for it; and, if it were not that I am under so much obligation to my wife, I would leave her and go some whither where neither grandees nor common folk would come to look after me.”

This modest style of language did not prevent Marshal d’Ancre from occasionally having strange fits of domineering arrogance.  “By God, sir,” he wrote to one of his friends, “I have to complain of you; you treat for peace without me; you have caused the queen to write to me that, for her sake, I must give up the suit I had commenced against M. de Montbazon to get paid what he owes me.  In all the devils’ names, what do the queen and you take me for?  I am devoured to my very bones with rage.”  In his dread lest influence opposed to his own should be exercised over the young king, he took upon himself to regulate his amusements and his walks, and prohibited him from leaving Paris.  Louis XIII. had amongst his personal attendants a young nobleman, Albert de Luynes, clever in training little sporting birds, called butcher-birds (pies grieches, or shrikes), then all the rage; and the king made him his falconer and lived on familiar terms with him.  Playing at billiards one day, Marshal d’Ancre, putting on his hat, said to the king, “I hope your Majesty will allow me to be covered.”  The king allowed it, but remained surprised and shocked.  His young page, Albert de Luynes, observed his displeasure, and being anxious, himself also, to become a favorite, he took pains to fan it.

[Illustration:  Louis XIII. and Albert de Luynes——­154]

A domestic plot was set hatching against Marshal d’Ancre.  What was its extent and who were the accomplices in it?  This is not clear.  However it may have been, on the 24th of April, 1617, M. de Vitry, captain of the guard (capitaine de quartier) that day in the royal army which was besieging Soissons, ordered some of his officers to provide themselves with a pistol each in their pockets, and he himself went to that door of the Louvre by which the king would have to go to the queenmother’s.  When Marshal d’Ancre arrived at this door, “There is the marshal,” said one of the officers; and Vitry laid hands upon him, saying, “Marshal, I have the king’s orders to arrest you.”  “Me!” said the marshal in surprise, and attempting to resist.