reconciled a court.  The king received his mother, according to some, in the little town of Cousieres, and, according to others, at Tours or Amboise.  They embraced, with tears.  “God bless me, my boy, how you are grown!” said the queen.  “In order to be of more service to you, mother,” answered the king.  The cheers of the people hailed their reconciliation; not without certain signs of disquietude on the part of the favorite, Albert de Luynes, who was an eye-witness.  After the interview, the king set out for Paris again; and Mary de’ Medici returned to her government of Anjou to take possession of it, promising, she said, to rejoin her son subsequently at Paris.  Du Plessis-Mornay wrote to one of his friends at court, “If you do not get the queen along with you, you have done nothing at all; distrust will increase with absence; the malcontents will multiply; and the honest servants of the king will have no little difficulty in managing to live between them.”

How to live between mother and son without being committed to one or the other, was indeed the question.  A difficult task.  For three months the courtiers were equal to it; from May to July, 1619, the court and the government were split in two; the king at Paris or at Tours, the queen-mother at Angers or at Blois.  Two eminent men, Richelieu amongst the Catholics and Du Plessis-Mornay amongst the Protestants, advised them strongly and incessantly to unite again, to live and to govern together.  “Apply yourself to winning the king’s good graces,” said Richelieu to the queen-mother:  “support on every occasion the interests of the public without speaking of your own; take the side of equity against that of favor, without attacking the favorites and without appearing to envy their influence.”  Mornay used the same language to the Protestants.  “Do not wear out the king’s patience,” he said to them:  “there is no patience without limits.”  Louis XIII. listened to them without allowing himself to be persuaded by them; the warlike spirit was striving within the young man; he was brave, and loved war as war rather than for political reasons.  The grand provost of Normandy was advising him one day not to venture in person into his province, saying, “You will find there nothing but revolt and disagreeables.”  “Though the roads were all paved with arms,” answered the king, “I would march over the bellies of my foes, for they have no cause to declare against me, who have offended nobody.  You shall have the pleasure of seeing it; you served the late king my father too well not to rejoice at it.”  The queenmother, on her side, was delighted to see herself surrounded at Angers by a brilliant court; and the Dukes of Longueville, of La Tremoille, of Retz, of Rohan, of Mayenne, of Epernon, and of Nemours, promised her numerous troops and effectual support.  She might, nevertheless, have found many reasons to doubt and wait for proofs.  The king moved upon Normandy; and his quartermasters came to assign