nobody being present but three women of the bedchamber, a servant or two, the king and my father, whom he brought with him and kept there. Madame de Combalet, afterwards Duchesse d'Aiguillon, arrived, but her appearance seemed at once to freeze the queen. The lady threw herself at her feet, with the most respectful and becoming language. She was clever, and I have heard my father say that on this occasion she showed it. But the icy cold

man of his kind whom recent ages have pro- | just completed; the king came backwards duced; but it is not the less true that none of and forwards from Versailles to the hotel of these great things were accomplished in his the ambassadors in the Rue de Tournon to be time without being previously discussed in near his mother. On the day of the great recprofound secrecy between Richelieu and the onciliation the king went on foot to his mothking. Who then can say, since no third per-er's apartment. She was alone at her toilette, son was present, what was the share of each of them in first conceiving and digesting these measures, or in deciding on the manner in which they were to be executed —which of the two added, diminished, corrected? If it may readily be thought that Richelieu bore the larger part in them, and sometimes the whole, can it reasonably be contended that Louis had not his part also? And as they were not executed without his approbation, his will, his assent as king and master, he must have under-ness of the queen was succeeded by a fit of stood them, and felt their merit, their feasibility, their operation, their conduct. I repeat, it has never been denied that he had intelligence, valor, military capacity, and the love of what is great; add then the modesty, the humility, the contempt and renunciation of self, an aversion to flattery so sincere that, abjuring it for himself, he saw with tranquil serenity that it was lavished on his minister, and it may be said that Louis cannot be stripped of a large share in all that was planned and executed during his reign, although it was not possible that the whole meed of glory should not thus have fallen to Richelieu and remain ever since attached to him. The glory of Louis XIII. was to know that he deserved it and to despise it: what glory is more hero-should withdraw. Bursting into tears, she met ical or more rare?

On his return from Italy in the spring of 1630, Louis XIII. fell ill and lay in danger of his life at Lyons. The possibility of his death agitated the court with continual intrigues. Gaston, his brother, was heir to the crown; Richelieu was in power; the queen-mother was the rival of both in her own interest and in that of Spain, and her open hostility to the cardinal broke forth at last in the catastrophe of the journée des dupes (November 11, 1630), which has never been so graphically described as in these pages. We must somewhat abridge Saint-Simon's

narrative.

The queen turned short on arriving in Paris. She declared to the king that, much as she had to complain of the ingratitude of the cardinal, she had at last resolved to be reconciled to him. The king desired nothing better, since this relieved him from the odious necessity of choosing between his mother and his minister. An early day was fixed on which the cardinal and his niece, Madame de Combalet, lady-in-waiting of the queen, who had been dismissed by her Majesty, were to attend her toilette, and be taken again into favor. The royal toilette was then attended by very few persons of high distinction. The queen was living at the Luxembourg, which she had

temper, then by anger, then by rage, bitter
reproaches, a torrent of insults, and at last of
such abuse as only fishwives use.
The king
tried at first to interpose, reminding the queen
of what she had promised and of what was due
to himself and to her own station. Nothing
could stop the torrent. The king from time
to time gave my father a look. My father
stood motionless, hardly daring to look at the
king. When he related this prodigious scene,
he always added that never in his life did he
feel so ill at ease. At last the king, exasper-
ated, stepped forward, for he was standing all
the time, took Madame de Combalet, who was
still kneeling, by the shoulders, and said to
her angrily that she had heard enough and

the cardinal, who was just entering the apart-
ment; he was so alarmed by what he saw, that
he hesitated to proceed. He did, however,
enter the queen's chamber, knelt before her,
and was at first tolerably received. But very
soon the tide began to rise, the storm broke
out again; she called him ungrateful, treach-
erous, and a thousand pretty names, and ended
by driving the cardinal from her presence for-
has often told me that Richelieu looked like a
ever. My father, still glancing at the king,
convict, and as for himself he thought he
should sink through the floor. At last the
cardinal went away. The king shortly re-
buked his mother for her behavior, and then
withdrew on foot, angry. As they walked
away he asked my father what he thought of
all he had seen and heard. My father shrugged
his shoulders and said nothing. The court
was thronged with people anxious to know
what had happened. The king broke through
them all, and withdrew with my father to his
closet, where he threw himself on a sofa, and
the buttons of his pourpoint burst, so swelled
was he with rage.

The moment was come when a choice between the mother and the minister must be made, and the elder Saint-Simon proceeded, being ordered by his master, to explain at length why it was not the minister who could be sacrificed. This interview lasted two hours, and ended in the resolution of the king to maintain the

cardinal in power. Upon this decision | Saint-Simon withdrew to Blaye; but the the king desired the Duke de Saint-Simon king remained in close correspondence to send word to the cardinal, as from him- with his friend, who returned to court on self, that he should wait upon his Ma- the death of the cardinal, and remained jesty that evening at Versailles. In the there for the few remaining months of the anteroom was a gentleman of his own ser- king's own life. Perhaps his retreat was vice -the father of Marshal Trouville. dictated by a prudent observation of the Taking him aside, he whispered in his fate of the king's favorites whilst Richeear to go at once to the cardinal, and tell lieu was alive. him that he was to proceed on the duke's assurance that evening to Versailles. This done, he re-entered the cabinet, and remained another hour with the king.

d'Effiat, and a distant connection of Richelieu's family, had been introduced to the notice and favor of the king in 1639 by the cardinal himself. The king was infatuated with his young favorite, and loaded him with premature honors. The office of grand écuyer was vacated in his favor by the Duc de Bellegarde, and thenceforth Cinq Mars, a lad barely twenty, was known at court, as he is in the memoirs of the time, as Monsieur le Grand.

equal facility through the hands of the king, the queen mother, and his own partisans. In spite of these defects, calculated to deprive him of any adherents, he always had as many of them as he wished, from the long sterility of the marriage of Louis XIII. and the bad health of that prince, which caused Gaston to be regarded for two-and-twenty years as heir presumptive to the crown; and after the king, whose health grew more and more precarious, had children, his brother was looked upon as the future administrator of the kingdom at no distant period, under the queen his sister-inlaw, with whom he had already been intimately connected by common hatreds and affections. The cardinal did not doubt that these ties Both of them had long been attached to the of birth, joined to such enormous personal queen-mother; nothing had ever interrupted obligations, would indissolubly attach this the close alliance of the two queens, from the young man to his service, and that, Cinq Mars date of the marriage of Louis XIII., riveted being the king's favorite, all the influence and by the Spanish passions which possessed them information of that position would strengthen both, and by the open hatred they bore to his own authority as prime minister. He was ministers who thought as Frenchmen, and to mistaken, against all human reason. He found the persons whom Louis XIII. honored with in him ingratitude, ambition without limit and his friendship and confidence. On his mother, without judgment, in a word a most dangeron his brother, on his wife, the king therefore ous madman. The king's health became daily had to look with continual suspicion. This worse, the queen had given birth to a son the domestic grievance was extreme and incessant; year before, a regency was near at hand. The his mildness, his patience, his virtue, his atten- rank of Gaston, and his relations to his sistertions had never mitigated it, and this misfor-in-law the queen, promised him a great authortune had commenced without him and endured throughout his life.

This dark picture of the character of Gaston is not overcharged. Profligate in his morals, treacherous to his brother, treasonable to the State, perfidious to his friends, whom he sacrificed without remorse to save himself from condign punishment, had he been a man of less than the highest rank, his ever-recurring crimes would infallibly have sent him to the scaf

ity during the infancy of the future king, Louis XIV. Both mortally hated Richelieu. Cinq Mars did not hesitate to abandon himself to

neither

them, the one and the other, at a time when
he could serve them, with a view to his future
advantage. This policy was infamous; yet,
if he had stopped there, it might have suited
the purposes of a far-sighted scoundrel, capa-
ble of sacrificing all to the preservation and
augmentation of his fortune. Cinq Mars had
in haste to fly with his own wings. Richelieu,
age nor experience to be wise; he was
who perceived it, endeavored to check him,
failed, grew angry, treated him ill, and Cinq
Mars became his personal enemy. He did
the cardinal all the mischief he could, which
recommended him to the queen and Gaston,
with whom at last he completely engaged him-
self in close alliance; with Montrésor and
Fontrailles he also courted the friendship of
de Thou, of whom something must be said.
the Duc de Bouillon through François-Auguste

fold. The "Memoirs of Nicolas Goulas " recently published by the Société de l'Histoire de France (to which we have already referred), though written by a devoted member of his own household, are a speaking record of his baseness and his iniquities, and one only regrets that he escaped the fate he deserved. It was he who sent Chalais to the block, after having implicated him in a plot for the murder of the cardinal. It was he who broke out into open rebellion in 1632, which cost the gallant and noble Duc de Montmorency his life, while Gaston made his peace with the king without an effort to save his victims. Lastly, it was he who was the soul of the great conspiracy of 1641, with the Duc de Bouillon and the court of Spain, which had Cinq Mars and De Thou for its instruments and its prey. The ac count given by Saint-Simon of this last de Fontrailles, Marquis de Marestang, Sénéchal d'Artransaction is so minute and so interest-magnac, was one of the most active members of the

ing that we shall cite it at some length.

M. de Cinq Mars, son of Marshal

This gentleman was the eldest son of Monsieur de Thou, président à mortier in the Parliament of Paris, who died in 1617 at sixtythree, illustrious for many important offices and the integrity of his life, and celebrated for his admirable history of France, from 1545 to 1607. He married a daughter of Gaspar de la Chastre, Comte de Nancy, by whom he had François-Auguste de Thou, the subject of this notice. The son succeeded his father as grand

and very intimate with him.

M. de Montrésor was a first cousin of De Thou
Louis d'Astarac, Vicomte

conspiracy, and the most eager to put Richelieu to death; but he effected his escape when the plot was discovered, and lived on till the year 1677.

Cinq Mars with an extreme desire to gain the friendship of the Duc de Bouillon in order to restore his confidence and alliance to Gaston. Whilst from Sédan Bouillon was treating with the king, who was at Mézières, De Thou, who had followed the court, made several journeys to Sédan, and at the request of Cinq Mars offered his friendship to Bouillon and solicited his in return. Nothing could be more welcome to so factious a person than a union with the favorite who promised him through De Thou to leave him in ignorance of nothing which might come to his knowledge. The matter having reached this point, and the treaty being concluded, Bouillon went twice to Mézières, where on both occasions he saw Cinq Mars alone or with De Thou. The union became more and more close; and Bouillon promised to receive Gaston at Sédan if he were obliged to withdraw from France. Somewhat later Bouillon engaged to come to Paris after the departure of the king for Roussillon; he was as good as his word. He saw Cinq Mars twice at St. Germain in his room; he saw him twice at Paris by night in the Place Royale, no one else being present but De Thou, who managed these rendezvous. From the Place Royale they went once to the stables of Gaston where that prince met them.* It was there that the draft of the treaty with Spain was read by Cinq Mars; and there it was resolved to send Fontrailles to Madrid. Bouillon, who had just accepted the command of the army in Italy, engaged to act there in conformity with the treaty. This document being drawn up and signed, Fontrailles was ordered to take it to Madrid, and to bring it back promptly concluded. De Thou exceedingly disapproved this treaty, but he kept the secret of his friends. Bouillon started for Italy, the king for Roussillon. The queen remained at St. Germain, Monsieur le Prince (Condé) at Paris where he commanded, assisted by the Chancellor Séguier for the transaction of business. Gaston begged off the journey, and remained at Blois. Aubigoux and Fontrailles insisted that Richelieu must be made away with; for this purpose they followed the court to Lyons, where Cinq Mars, in order to be in strength, had assembled a multitude of the nobles of Auvergne on the

master of the king's library, an office he deserved for his erudition, and which connected him with the most learned men of the time. He was also a master of requests and a councillor of state, a title then readily granted. Books had not affected the grace of his manners, and had increased the charm of his conversation, which obtained for him many friends amongst men of letters, men of law, and at court, where the connections of his mother and the reputation of his father and grandfather gave him a ready access. All found him amiable, trustworthy, and faithful to his friends. This agreeable social position gave him a taste for the great world and diverted him from his profession; he aimed at the highest and the greatest; his friends were men of the utmost consideration, for the friendship of a man so much in fashion was a merit; his wit, his probity, his capacity, his discretion, gained him that of the great, whilst his manners, his politeness, his learning, his accomplishments, caused him to be adored by all the most cultivated persons of his time. That time was ever full of factions and of troubles; and though he appeared, and believed himself, to be without ambition, he feasted on all the manifold intrigues into which his friends of the highest rank continually plunged him. Friendship and mutual confidence gradually entangled him in relations with the queen, with Gaston, with the Vendômes, with the Maréchale de Bouillon, and the Duc de Bouillon, her son, and many others. These relations became intimate; he did not perceive the danger of them, and lost himself in the glow of these luminous exhalations. Cinq Mars, such as he was, could not fail passionately to desire his friendship, and De Thou was not a man not to be enchanted to share, and that intimately, the friendship of so dazzling a favorite. The most complete and total confidence soon sprang up between them. Till then De Thou had been, or at least appeared to be, only the friend and confidant of personages of the highest rank, and the first importance, without taking an active part in anything. This last intimacy was fatal to him. Cinq Mars, enraged at the ill-treatment of Richelieu, the more so as he deserved it, had already conceived a design to ruin the cardinal at any cost, and threw himself, for that pur-arrival of the king. pose, into all the schemes of the queen and Gaston. The prince did not dare to take a final resolution without having secured a place of safety on the frontier. Sédan was the only place into which he could throw himself in case of need, to treat with Spain and await her support. He had just before deceived the late Comte de Soissons and the Duc de Bouillon at Sédan, with whom he had treated, and According to Goulas, who had the particulars from whom he had even excited to revolt. The Gaston himself, this meeting was held at the Hôtel de object was to win back Bouillon, whose treaty of the prince were then lodged. Gaston proposed that Venise in the Rue Gilles au Marais, where the stables with the king, whose protestations and oaths De Thou should not be present at the conference with were still quite recent, and who had not for- Bouillon and Cinq Mars, as he said too many persons gotten the inactivity of the Spaniards, and were in the secret; but he was overruled, and it was that he had only been rescued by the troops of life. He declared on his trial “qu'il s'était coupable De Thou's presence on this occasion that cost him his the emperor. This it was which animated | que parce qu'il avait des oreilles."

It was at Lyons that the blow was to be struck; but at the last moment their courage failed them. Fontrailles had concluded the treaty in Spain with the Count-Duke of Olivares, and brought it back with incredible diligence, signed. The queen knew these facts, and spoke of the treaty at St. Germain to De Thou.