But an unfortunate series of accidents led to my imprisonment for a week in the Bastille.  A signal had been agreed upon between the queen and Madame de Chevreuse during the recent trouble.  If all went well, Madame de Chevreuse was to receive a prayer-book bound in green, but a red binding was to indicate disaster.  I never knew which of the two ladies made the mistake, but when the queen was acquitted Madame de Chevreuse received what she took to be the signal of misfortune; concluded that both she and the queen were undone, and disguising herself as a man, she fled to Spain.  This escapade, so surprising at the very moment when the Queen’s troubles had come to an end, inspired the king and the cardinal with the gravest suspicions that they had not, after all, fathomed her majesty’s treachery.  The cardinal summoned me to Paris, and hinted at unpleasant consequences if I did not reveal all I knew.  I knew nothing; and as my manner seemed more reserved and dry than he was accustomed to, I was sent to the Bastille.

The little time that I spent there showed me more vividly than anything I had yet seen the picture of vengeance.  I saw there men of great names and of great merits, an infinite number of men and women of all ranks in life, all unhappy in the affliction of long and cruel incarceration.  The sight of so many pitiable creatures did much to increase my natural hatred for Cardinal Richelieu’s administration.  I was released in eight days, and thought myself very fortunate to escape at a period when none others were set at liberty.

But my disgrace was well repaid.  The queen showed herself gratefully aware of all that I had suffered in her service; Mademoiselle d’Hautefort gave full expression to her esteem and friendship; and Madame de Chevreuse was not less gracious.  I enjoyed not only the favour of those to whom I was attached, but also a certain approval which the world is not slow to give to the unfortunate whose conduct has not really been disgraceful.  Under these conditions an exile of two or three years from court was not intolerable.  I was young; the king and the cardinal were failing in health; I had everything to hope for from a change.  I was happy in my family, and enjoyed all the pleasures of country life, and the neighbouring provinces were full of other exiles.

Cardinal Richelieu died on December 4, 1642.  Although his enemies could only rejoice at finding themselves free at last from so many persecutions, the event has shown that the state could ill spare him.  He had made so many changes in public affairs that he alone was able to direct them safely.  No one before Richelieu had known all the power of the kingdom, or had been able to gather it all up into the hands of the sovereign.  The severity of his adminstration had cost many lives; the nobility had been humbled, and the common people had been loaded with taxes; but the grandeur of his political designs, such as the taking of La Rochelle, the destruction of the Huguenot party, and the weakening of the house of Austria, no less than his intrepidity in carrying them out, have secured for his memory a justly-merited fame.