But Madame de Chevreuse almost always brought misfortune to those whom she interested in her projects.  She had much spirit, ambition, and beauty, and made full use of her charms to forward these enterprises of hers.  Already Cardinal Richelieu had accused the queen and her of complicity in Chalais’s plot against the king’s life—­for Chalais had been her warm admirer—­and the king believed in their guilt to the end of his days.  Again, when the young and handsome Lord Holland came to France to arrange the marriage of the King of England to the sister of the King of France, and quickly won the affection of Madame de Chevreuse, the two lovers thought fit to celebrate their attachment by inspiring a similar intrigue between the French queen and the Duke of Buckingham, who had not so much as met one another.  This astonishing undertaking was successful.  Buckingham came over to wed madame in the name of his master, and his ardent love for the queen, which she fully returned, deeply wounded both the king and Richelieu.  The cardinal sought his revenge through Lady Carlisle.  That haughty and jealous woman, to whom Buckingham had long been attached, noticed one night at a ball in England that he was wearing diamonds which she had not seen before, and contrived, unobserved, to detach them, in order that she might send them to Richelieu.  These diamonds had been the gift of the King of France to his queen, and it was intended that the cardinal, by showing them to the king, should prove the queen’s weakness.  But the Duke of Buckingham discovered his loss the same night, and at once suspected Lady Carlisle’s design.  He issued an immediate order that the English ports should be closed, and that no one should be permitted, under whatever pretext, to leave the country; and then, having had exactly similar jewels prepared, he sent them to the Queen of France, with an account of the whole matter.

It was at this time that the cardinal formed the project of the destruction of the Huguenot party, and of laying siege to La Rochelle.  The Duke of Buckingham came with a powerful fleet to aid La Rochelle, but in vain; the fortress was taken, and the duke was assassinated in England.  This murder gave the cardinal an inhuman joy; he jested at the queen’s sorrows, and began to hope again.

After the ruin of the Huguenots I returned from the army to court, being now seventeen years old, and began to notice the state of affairs.  The queen-mother and the cardinal were at enmity, and though everyone saw that something would come of it, no one could foretell what would happen.  The cardinal’s situation was precarious, the king had learned of his love for the queen, and was quite ready to disgrace him, and even asked the queen-mother to nominate someone to replace him.  She hesitated, and that hesitation was her ruin and saved the cardinal.