The cardinal either had not sworn at all or did not consider himself more bound than the queen by oaths.  Their Majesties set out for Compiegne; there the minister brought the affair before the council, explaining with a skilful appearance of indifference the different courses to be taken, and ending by propounding the question of his own retirement or the queen-mother’s.  “His Majesty, without hesitation, made his own choice, taking the resolution of returning to Paris and of begging the queen-mother to retire for the time being to one of his mansions, particularly recommending Moulins, which she had formerly expressed to the late king a wish to have; and, in order that she might be the better contented with it, he offered her the government of it and of all the province.”  Next day, February 23, 1631, before the queen-mother was up, her royal son had taken the road back to Paris, leaving Marshal D’Estrees at Compiegne to explain to the queen his departure and to hasten his mother’s, a task in which the marshal had but small success, for Mary de’ Medici declared that, if they, meant to make her depart, they would have to drag her stark naked from her bed.  She kept herself shut up in the castle, refusing to go out and complaining of the injury the seclusion did to her health; then she fled by night from Compiegne, attended by one gentleman only, to go and take refuge in Flanders, whence she arrived before long at Brussels.

The cardinal’s game was definitively won.  Mary de’ Medici had lost all empire over her son, whom she was never to see again.

The Duke of Orleans meanwhile had taken the road to Lorraine, seeking a refuge in the dominions of a prince able, crafty, restless, and hostile to France from inclination as well as policy.  Smitten, before long, with the duke’s sister, Princess Margaret, Gaston of Orleans married her privately, with a dispensation from the Cardinal of Lorraine, all which did not prevent either duke or prince from barefacedly denying the marriage when the king reproached them with having contracted this marriage without his consent.  In the month of June, 1632, the Duke of Orleans entered France again at the head of some wretched regiments, refuse of the Spanish army, given to him by Don Gonzalvo di Cordova.  For the first time, he raised the standard of revolt openly.  For him it was of little consequence, accustomed as he was to place himself at the head of parties that he abandoned without shame in the hour of danger; but he dragged along with him in his error a man worthy of another fate and of another chief.  Henry, Duke of Montmorency, marshal of France, and governor of Languedoc, was a godson of Henry IV., who said one day to M. de Villeroy and to President Jeannin, “Look at my son Montmorency, how well made he is; if ever the house of Bourbon came to fail, there is no family in Europe which would so well deserve the crown of France as, his, whose great men have always supported it, and even added