In the month of December, 1622, the work was as yet full of difficulty.  There were numerous rivals for the heritage of royal favor that had slipped from the dying hands of Luynes.  The Prince of Conde, a man of ability and moderation, “a good managing man (homme de bon menage),” as he was afterwards called by the cardinal, was the first to get possession of the mind of the king, at that time away from his mother, who was residing at Paris.  “It was not so much from dislike that they opposed her,” says Richelieu, “as from fear lest, when once established at the king’s council, she might wish to introduce me there.  They acknowledged in me some force of judgment; they dreaded my wits, fearing lest, if the king were to take special cognizance of me, it might come to his committing to me the principal care of his affairs.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. ii. p. 193.] On returning to Paris, the king, nevertheless, could not refuse this gratification to his mother.  However, “the prince, who was in the habit of speaking very freely, and could not be mum about what he had on his mind, permitted himself to go so far as to say that she had been received into the council on two conditions, one, that she should have cognizance of nothing but what they pleased, and the other, that, though only a portion of affairs was communicated to her, she would serve as authority for all in the minds of the people.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. ii. p. 194.] In fact, the queen-mother quite perceived that she was only shown the articles in the window, and did not enter the shop; “but, with all the prudence and patience of an Italian, when she was not carried away by passion, she knew how to practise dissimulation towards the Prince of Conde and his allies, Chancellor Sillery and his son Puisieux, secretary of state.  She accompanied her son on an expedition against the Huguenots of the South, which she had not advised, “foreseeing quite well that, if she were separated from the king, she would have no part either in peace or war, and that, if they got on without her for ten months, they would become accustomed to getting on without her.”  She had the satisfaction of at last seeing the Bishop of Lucon promoted to the cardinalship she had so often solicited for him in vain; but, at the same time, the king called to the council Cardinal Rochefoucauld, “not through personal esteem for the old cardinal,” says Richelieu, “but to cut off from the new one all hope of a place for which he might be supposed to feel some ambition.”  Nevertheless, in spite of his enemies’ intrigues, in spite of a certain instinctive repugnance on the part of the king himself, who repeated to his mother, “I know him better than you, madame; he is a man of unbounded ambition,” the “new cardinal” was called to the council at the opening of the year 1624, on the instance of the Marquis of La Vieuville, superintendent of finance and chief of the council, who felt himself unsteady in his position, and sought to secure the