the siege of La Rochelle; the queen-mother hoped to retain him by her at court; but the cardinal, ever on the watch over the movements of Spain, prevailed upon Louis XIII. to support his subject, the Duke of Nevers, legitimate heir to Mantua and Montferrat, of which the Spaniards were besieging the capital.  The army began to march, but the queen designedly retarded the movements of her son.  The cardinal was appointed generalissimo, and the king, who had taken upon himself the occupation of Savoy, was before long obliged by his health to return to Lyons, where he fell seriously ill.  The two queens hurried to his bedside; and they were seconded by the keeper of the seals, M. de Marillac, but lately raised to power by Richelieu as a man on whom he could depend, and now completely devoted to the queen-mother’s party.

At the news of the king’s danger, the cardinal quitted St. Jean-de-Maurienne for a precipitate journey to Lyons; but he was soon obliged to return to his army.  During the king’s convalescence, the resentment of the queen-mother against the minister, as well as that of Anne of Austria, had free course; and when the royal train took the road slowly back to Paris, in the month of October, the ruin of the cardinal had been resolved upon.

What a trip was that descent of the Loire from Roanne to Briare in the same boat and “at very close quarters between the queen-mother and the cardinal!” says Bassompierre.  “She hoped that she would more easily be able to have her will, and crush her servant with the more facility, the less he was on his guard against it; she looked at him with a kindly eye, accepted his dutiful attentions and respects as usual, and spoke to him with as much appearance of confidence as if she had wholly given it him.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. iii. pp. 303-305.]

The king had requested his mother “to put off for six weeks or two months the grand move against the cardinal, for the sake of the affairs of his kingdom, which were then at a crisis in Italy” [Memoires de Bassompierre, t. iii. p. 276], and she had promised him; but Richelieu “suspected something wrong, and discovered more,” and, on the 12th of November, 1630, when mother and son were holding an early conference at the Luxembourg, a fine palace which Mary de’ Medici had just finished, “the cardinal arrived there; finding the door of the chamber closed, he entered the gallery and went and knocked at the door of the cabinet, where he obtained no answer.  Tired of waiting, and knowing the ins and outs of the mansion, he entered by the little chapel; whereat the king was somewhat dismayed, and said to the queen in despair, ‘Here he is!’ thinking, no doubt, that he would blaze forth.  The cardinal, who perceived this dismay, said to them, ’I am sure you were speaking about me.’  The queen answered, ‘We were not.’  Whereupon, he having replied, ‘Confess it, madam,’ she said yes, and thereupon conducted herself with great tartness towards him, declaring to the king ’that she would not put up with the cardinal any longer, or see in her house either him or any of his relatives and friends, to whom she incontinently gave their dismissal, and not to them only, but even down to the pettiest of her officers who had come to her from his hands.’” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. iii. p. 428.]