falling a prey to fresh terrors, recommenced his intrigues to tear him from her entirely.  And he succeeded.”  The king’s affection for Mdlle. d’Hautefort awoke again.  She had just rendered the queen an important service.  Anne of Austria was secretly corresponding with her two brothers, King Philip IV. and the Cardinal Infante, a correspondence which might well make the king and his minister uneasy, since it was carried on through Madame de Chevreuse, and there was war at the time with Spain.  The queen employed for this intercourse a valet named Laporte, who was arrested and thrown into prison.  The chancellor removed to Val-de-Grace, whither the queen frequently retired; he questioned the nuns and rummaged Anne of Austria’s cell.  She was in mortal anxiety, not knowing what Laporte might say or how to unloose his tongue, so as to keep due pace with her own confessions to the king and the cardinal.  Mdlle. d’Hautefort disguised herself as a servant, went straight to the Bastille, and got a letter delivered to Laporte, thanks to the agency of Commander de Jars, her friend, then in prison.  The confessions of mistress and agent being thus set in accord, the queen obtained her pardon, but not without having to put up with reproaches and conditions of stern supervision.  Madame de Chevreuse took fright, and went to seek refuge in Spain.  The king’s inclination towards Mdlle. d’Hautefort revived, without her having an idea of turning it to profit on her own account.  “She had so much loftiness of spirit that she could never have brought herself to ask anything for herself and her family; and all that could be wrung from her was to accept what the king and queen were pleased to give her.”

Richelieu had never forgotten Mdlle. d’Hautefort’s airs:  he feared her, and accused her to the king of being concerned in Monsieur’s continual intrigues.  Louis XIII.’s growing affection for young Cinq-Mars, son of Marshal d’Effiat, was beginning to occupy the gloomy monarch; and he the more easily sacrificed Mdlle. d’Hautefort.  The cardinal merely asked him to send her away for a fortnight.  She insisted upon hearing the order from the king’s own mouth.  “The fortnight will last all the rest of my life,” she said:  “and so I take leave of your Majesty forever.”  She went accompanied by the regrets and tears of Anne of Austria, and leaving the field open to the new favorite, the king’s “rattle,” as the cardinal called him.

M. de Cinq-Mars was only nineteen when he was made master of the wardrobe and grand equerry of France.  Brilliant and witty, he amused the king and occupied the leisure which peace gave him.  The passion Louis XIII. felt for his favorite was jealous and capricious.  He upbraided the young man for his flights to Paris to see his friends and the elegant society of the Marais, and sometimes also Mary di Gonzaga, daughter of the Duke of Mantua, wooed but lately by the Duke of Orleans, and not indifferent, it was said, to the vows of M. Le Grand, as Cinq-Mars