Book 2 — CHAPTER VI

1614

New anxieties—Disaffection of the Princes—They demand a Reformation in the Government—Cunning of the Duc de Bouillon—Imprisonment of M. de Vendôme—He escapes—The Regent suspects the sincerity of Bouillon—Conspiracy of the Ducs de Vendôme and de Retz—The Duc de Nevers seizes Mézières—Recall of M. d'Epernon—Marie de Medicis resolves to resign the Regency, but is dissuaded by her Council—Treasonable reports—Precarious position of the Queen—Levy of troops—Manifesto of the Prince de Condé—Reply of the Regent—Death of the Connétable—Duc de Montmorency—Bassompierre is appointed Colonel-General of the Swiss Guards—The march against M. de Condé—Marie endeavours to temporize—The price of loyalty—The Prince de Condé leaves Paris—Christening of the Duc d'Anjou and the Princesse Henriette Marie—A temporary calm—The Ducs de Vendôme and de Retz excite the Burgundians to revolt—The Protestants refuse to join their faction—They are compelled to lay down their arms—The Prince de Condé marches upon Poitiers—The Church "military"—The prelate and the populace—A governor superseded—The Prince is compelled to withdraw to Châtellerault—He burns down the episcopal palace—The Court proceed to Poitou—Their reception—The Duc de Vendôme makes his submission—The States assemble at Nantes—Enormities perpetrated by the troops of M. de Vendôme—Folly of that Prince—Death of the Prince de Conti—A bachelor-Benedict—A nom de guerre—Majority of Louis XIII—The Bed of Justice—The assembly of the States-General is deferred—The King solicits his mother to retain her authority in the Government—Meeting of the States—The early years of Louis XIII— Charles Albert de Luynes—His antecedents—His ambition—His favour with the young King—He is made Governor of Amboise.

The commencement of the year 1614 was productive of new anxieties to the Queen-Regent. The Maréchal de Bouillon, whose restless ambition was ever prompting him to some new enterprise, had warily, but not the less surely, possessed himself of the confidence of the Princes and the other disaffected nobles, and had succeeded in aggravating their feelings against the Court party to such an extent that he experienced little difficulty in inducing them to abandon the capital and to retire to their several governments. M. de Condé had never forgiven the refusal of Marie to bestow upon him the command of the citadel of Château Trompette, or the recall of the ministers; and he also deeply resented the desertion of the Maréchal d'Ancre from his interests, as well as the wealth and honours to which he had attained; while the Ducs de Nevers, de Mayenne, de Vendôme, de Longueville, and de Piney-Luxembourg, together with a host of others, considered themselves aggrieved by their exclusion from power, and were consequently ready to espouse his cause. Thus Bouillon found it easy to induce them to retire simultaneously from the Court; and it was agreed that they should assemble in Champagne, and collectively demand a reform in the Government.

Accordingly the Prince de Condé took his leave of their Majesties on the 6th of January, and retired for a time to Châteauroux, whence he afterwards proceeded to Mézières. This example was shortly followed by the other chiefs of his faction. The Duc de Nevers retired at once to Champagne, the Duc de Mayenne to the Isle of France, and M. de Longueville to Picardy. In February the Duc de Vendôme prepared in his turn to join his friends; but as their purpose had by this time become apparent to the Regent, she caused him to be confined in an apartment of the Louvre; whence, however, he succeeded a short time afterwards in escaping by a door that had long been unused, and which being covered by the tapestried hanging of the chamber had been at length forgotten.

The Maréchal de Bouillon, however, upon whom the cabal mainly relied, as his sovereignty of Sedan gave them the assurance of a secure retreat should they be menaced with reprisals, made no haste to imitate his dupes. He had been far too crafty to compromise himself beyond redemption with a party which might ultimately fail; and he had consequently calculated with great care the probable chances of furthering his own fortunes. After the departure of the Princes he formed his decision; and his first act was to wait upon the ministers, and to reveal to them the intentions of M. de Condé and his adherents; a communication which excited more annoyance than surprise in those to whom it was addressed. He then proceeded to the Louvre, where he repeated to the Regent what he had previously declared to her ministers; and although he tempered his information with assurances of the respect and attachment of the self-exiled Princes towards her person, Marie considered the mere fact of such a coalition so dangerous, that even when Bouillon volunteered to exert all his influence to induce them to abandon their design, and to return to the capital, although she accepted his offer, and permitted him to follow them ostensibly for that purpose, she was far from feeling reassured; and she soon had reason to discover that her fears were only too well—grounded; as the Duke, after an elaborate leave-taking at the palace, publicly declared that he was about to proceed to Sedan in order to avoid arrest.

The next intelligence which reached the capital was the seizure of the citadel of Mézières by the Duc de Nevers; and as matters daily assumed a more serious aspect, the Queen resolved to recall M. d'Epernon from Metz, whither he had withdrawn a few months previously, and to conciliate him by reviving in the person of his son M. de Candale the nominal office of First Lord of the Bedchamber, which he had himself held under Henri III; while, at the same time, she held out to the Duc de Guise the prospect of commanding the armies of the King, should it be found expedient to march against the Prince de Condé.

These precautions were, however, far from sufficient to tranquillize the mind of Marie de Medicis, who began to apprehend a renewal of the intestine calamities which had overwhelmed the nation during the preceding reigns; and satisfied that despite all her efforts at conciliation she was personally obnoxious to the Princes, she expressed her determination to resign the regency. Nor did either Concini or his wife, although their own fortunes were involved in her retirement, venture to dissuade her from her purpose, the threats of the disaffected nobles against themselves having convinced them that they had little mercy to expect at their hands should they still further urge the Queen to aggressive measures. From this hasty resolution Marie was, however, with some difficulty, dissuaded by her Council, who represented to her the dangerous position in which she could not fail to place the young King; who, utterly unaccustomed to public business, must prove incompetent to maintain his interests at so perilous a crisis as that which now excited her own fears.

The Regent readily admitted the validity of this argument; but in support of her purpose she informed them that she had just been apprised of a rumour which had spread in Brittany since the Duc de Vendôme had retired from the Court, by which she was accused of having attempted to poison the King in order to lengthen her own period of power; and with pardonable indignation she declared that she possessed no other means of refuting so horrible a calumny than that which she had adopted, and that she consequently owed this justice to herself. As she was, however, still entreated to sacrifice her own feelings to the safety of the sovereign and the welfare of the kingdom, she at length yielded; but that she made the concession with reluctance was sufficiently evident.

"As regards the horrible crime imputed to me, Messieurs," she said, "I can only swear that I would rather suffer death than continue to live on under such an accusation. I am well aware, moreover, that this is not the only calumny which has been circulated against my person and reputation; nor is it the first time that the Maréchal d'Ancre has been designated as the instigator of my unpopular measures; every new cabal inventing some fallacy to undermine my authority and to throw discredit upon my government. Since, however, you give it as your opinion that I shall better serve the King by retaining the regency until he shall be of fitting age to act upon his own responsibility, I will continue to exercise the power delegated to me by my late lord and husband; and to maintain that good understanding with my son which has ever hitherto existed between us."

The question was then discussed of whether it were more desirable to levy such troops as still remained faithful to the Crown, and at once endeavour to reduce the faction of the Princes by force, or to attempt a reconciliation by pacific means. The Cardinal de Joyeuse, Villeroy, and Jeannin were urgent that the former measure should be adopted; assigning as their reason that after the tergiversation and deceit of which the cabal had been convicted, they would profit by any delay on the part of the Government to strengthen their army, and to effect other means of defence, thus augmenting the difficulty of their suppression; the Chancellor was, however, of a different opinion, and counselled the Queen to avert, so long as it might be possible to do so, the horrors of a civil war. He represented to her the fact that all the principal nobles, with scarcely one exception, had leagued themselves with M. de Condé, while she had on her side only the Ducs de Guise and d'Epernon, who were, moreover, at variance; each coveting the dignity of Connétable, and scarcely seeking to disguise his jealousy of the other; and finally, he pointed out to her the dangerous attitude assumed by the Huguenots, who would not fail to take advantage of any civil dissension to advance their pretensions, which could only be done successfully during the minority of the sovereign.

Meanwhile M. de Condé had assembled the leaders of his party at Mézières, whence he forwarded a species of manifesto to the Queen-Regent, in which he complained in the name of his faction of "the waste of the public money; of the unworthiness of the individuals in power; of the undue authority assumed by the ministers; of the want of respect displayed towards the Princes of the Blood, the peers, and the officers of the Crown; of the obstacles endured by the Parliaments in the exercise of their jurisdiction; of the ruin of the great nobles; the excessive charges of the law courts; the oppression suffered by the people; the neglect exhibited in assembling the States-General; and the precipitation shown in concluding the marriage of the sovereign before he had attained his majority." Other objections followed, and then succeeded the conditions upon which the cabal declared themselves willing to return to their allegiance. The States-General were to be convened within three months; the royal marriages were to be deferred until the close of the Assembly; and the then-existing household of his Majesty was to be replaced by individuals of acknowledged probity.

The Prince at the same time wrote to the two Parliaments, to the Prince de Conti, to the dukes and peers, and to the great officers of the Crown, soliciting their assistance in the work of reform which he was about to undertake. Neither of the Parliaments, however, replied to his letter; and that addressed to Paris was placed unopened in the hands of the Regent, who forthwith forwarded it to the Chancellor.

The answer of Marie de Medicis to the manifesto addressed to herself was calm and dignified. She declared her willingness to assemble the States-General; but accompanied this concession by expressing her regret that the Prince should not, during the last four years, have personally made the representation, and assisted her in averting the evils of which he now complained, instead of absenting himself from the Court on the pretext of disapproving the proposed alliance with Spain, to which he had previously affixed his consent and signature. To each of his other objections he received an equally categorical reply; and the document terminated by an expression of her conviction that his offer to effect a reform in the state by pacific means rather than have recourse to force was desirable indeed, but little to be anticipated, since the formation of a cabal like that of which he had constituted himself the leader, and which was opposed to the legitimate authority of the sovereign, could only terminate in intestine broils, and compel the King to adopt the most violent measures in order to suppress it.

Precisely at this period intelligence reached the Court of the death of the veteran Connétable de Montmorency, one of the most gallant soldiers of his day, whose judgment and strong sense had long been proverbial, although he was utterly without education, and could scarcely sign his own name.

While the negotiation with Condé was still pending, a new anxiety added to the embarrassment of the Regent. The Swiss levies were about to be raised; but suspicions of the loyalty of the Duc de Rohan, who was colonel-general of this force, rendered her unwilling to confide so important a body of troops to his control; and she ultimately resolved to offer him a sum of money, and to induce him to resign his appointment. M. de Rohan readily acceded to the proposal, his position at that moment rendering him indifferent to its possession; and the Queen next sought to find an individual whose popularity with the Switzers, and devotion to her own interests, might render him an eligible successor to the displaced Duke. After considerable reflection she selected Bassompierre; but the suggestion was at once negatived by M. de Villeroy, who reminded her Majesty that the office was one which had never been filled by any person under the rank of a prince. So brilliant a prospect, however, gave the favoured courtier courage to plead his cause so successfully with his royal mistress, that she was at length induced to consent that, if he were enabled to persuade the Swiss themselves to solicit his appointment, the difficulty should be overcome. Fortunately for the aspirant the officer to whom the levies were entrusted was his personal friend, and so zealously did he advocate his cause that the Thirteen Cantons united in consenting to receive him as their leader; and Bassompierre, although only a petty noble of Lorraine, found himself invested with a command which was coveted by all the proudest subjects of France.

Once more Marie de Medicis resolved to afford to the adverse faction the opportunity of terminating their ill-advised struggle without bloodshed; and she accordingly despatched a trustworthy messenger to M. de Condé, volunteering to send deputies who should be authorized to effect a reconciliation. The offer was accepted, the malcontents having become paralyzed by the unexpected energy of their opponents; and after sundry meetings between the agents of the Government and the chiefs of the cabal, in which each made particular conditions for himself which were veiled by three demands of a more public nature, a treaty of peace was drawn up and signed by both parties, and amity was once more restored. Situated as they were, the Princes had been careful not to insist on more than they were aware would be readily conceded; and thus they asked only that the States-General should be convoked with as little delay as possible, that the double alliance with Spain should be delayed until the termination of the King's minority, and that the royal troops should be immediately disarmed.

To this last requisition the reply of the commissioners of the Crown was positive; the rebel faction were in the first place to lay down their own arms after which they pledged themselves that their example should be followed by the troops of the sovereign; and to this arrangement M. de Condé, after some hesitation, agreed.

Thus far all had progressed favourably; but the subsequent exactions of the disaffected party caused considerable anxiety in the Council of the Regent. The exorbitant pretensions of its leaders alarmed the ministers, but the crisis was sufficiently critical to induce them ultimately to satisfy the demands of their dearly-purchased allies. The Prince de Condé was invested with the government of Amboise, and received four hundred and fifty thousand livres in ready money. The Duc de Mayenne three hundred thousand, and the survivorship of the government of Paris; and all the other chiefs of the cabal the sums or governments that they had seen fit to exact; after which they ceased to insist upon the public grievances, and the Ducs de Longueville and de Mayenne returned to Court; an example which was followed by the Prince de Condé as soon as he had taken possession of his new government. The coldness with which he was received, however, and the little desire evinced to pay him that deference which he was ever anxious to exact, soon disgusted him with the capital, and he once more withdrew, little less disaffected than before.

On the 5th of June the Duc d'Anjou and the younger Princess were baptized at the Louvre with great ceremony, by the Cardinal de Bonzy, the almoner of the Queen. The sponsors of the Prince, who received the names of Gaston Jean Baptiste, were the ex-Queen Marguerite and the Cardinal de Joyeuse; while those given to his sister, who was held at the font by Madame and the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, were Henriette Marie; this being the Princess who subsequently became the wife of the unhappy Charles I. of England.

The completion of the treaty with the Princes had restored the nation to apparent tranquillity, and the government of the Regent bore a semblance of stability to which it had not previously attained, when new troubles broke out through the restlessness and jealousy of César de Vendôme; who, having merely been reinstated in his government and other dignities, considered himself to have been ill-treated by the Prince de Condé, to whose care he had confided his interests, and who consequently resolved to enforce more ample justice for himself. With a view of effecting his purpose, he induced the Duc de Retz, who was equally dissatisfied, to follow his example, and Brittany soon became ripe for revolt. As, however, Vendôme did not fail to perceive that without extending his faction he could not hope to make head successfully against the Court, he next endeavoured to engage M. de Rohan and the Protestants in his interest, believing the Duke to be much more powerful with the reformed party than he really was; and Rohan so far yielded as to attempt a convocation of the General Assembly in Gascony; but the prudence of Du Plessis-Mornay, who represented to the Huguenots the impolicy of embroiling themselves with the Government in order to gratify the ambition of an individual, decided them to refuse all participation in a political movement of that nature.

Repulsed but not discouraged, Vendôme still persevered, and as his intrigues tended to unsettle the minds of the people, and to harass the Regent, she resolved to despatch the Marquis de Coeuvres, then recently returned from his embassy in Italy, to expostulate with him, and endeavour to recall him to reason. This mission was peculiarly distasteful to the Marquis, who, being nearly connected with M. de Vendôme through his mother (Gabrielle d'Estrées), was fearful, should he fail to effect his purpose, that he must offend one or the other party; but as the commands of the Queen-mother were stringent, he was compelled to obey. His task proved an arduous one, the two Dukes warmly asserting their right to share in the benefits which M. de Condé had secured for himself and his immediate friends, and declaring their intention to obtain by force what they had been denied by the ingratitude of the Crown: nor was it until the envoy had been a second time instructed to assure them that should they persist in their disloyalty the King was prepared to march an army against them, that they were at length induced to sign a treaty which had been drawn up for that purpose, and to lay down their arms.

The communication of the prelate renewed all the apprehensions of Marie, who, after expressing her acknowledgments for his zeal, commanded him to adopt every means in his power to contravene the endeavours of the Prince and his adherents; and so ably did he fulfil her directions that he succeeded in winning over to the royal cause the greater number of the inhabitants; which he had no sooner accomplished than he caused the guards to be doubled, and thus rendered himself more powerful in the city than M. de Roannois himself. This fact soon became apparent to Condé, but he still trusted to the support of his friends, and accordingly presented himself at the gates with a small retinue, believing that the citizens would obey their governor, and refuse to oppose his entrance. The Bishop had, however, by the promptitude of his measures, effectually defeated the hopes of the Prince. He had loudly proclaimed in the streets that there was a conspiracy on foot for delivering up the city to the enemies of the King; and this announcement had at once sufficed to arouse all the energy of the inhabitants. In a short time the gates were closed, chains were stretched across the thoroughfares, and numerous barricades were erected. The prelate, gratified by these fearless evidences of his influence, became to the full as excited as his adherents, and arming himself with a pike, he placed himself at the head of the people, urging them to resist to the utmost the dishonour by which they were threatened; while the Governor, who was then inhabiting a suburban residence, no sooner became apprised of the belligerent demonstrations of the Bishop, and the effects which they had produced, than he galloped to the gates with the intention of opposing his authority to that of his clerical antagonist. At his command the gates were opened, and directing the immediate demolition of the barricades, he proceeded to the episcopal palace; not, however, without being subjected to the abuse of the irritated populace. The Bishop, whose policy was not inferior to his courage, offered him an asylum until the fury of the crowd should be appeased; and M. de Roannois, alarmed by the rough reception he had already encountered, at once accepted the offer, and thus became the prisoner of the prelate; who, producing the letter of the Regent, issued the orders necessary to ensure the safety of the city. Nor was this all; for with a sword by his side, the Bishop personally posted the sentinels at nightfall, and distributed money from his own private purse to the non-military combatants who had formed themselves into a militia.

Enraged by his disappointment, M. de Condé, after vainly attempting to obtain a hearing from the excited citizens, found himself compelled to retire with his companions, having on his way burnt down the country palace of the bishops of Poitiers; and he had no sooner reached that city than he wrote to the Regent to complain of the insult to which he had been subjected by the inhabitants of Poitiers, and to demand justice. The sympathies of the Court were, however, with the adverse party; but Marie de Medicis was so well aware of the consequences to be apprehended from Condé's irritation that she resolved to proceed to Poitou and Brittany in person, on the pretext of the weak health of the King, by whom she was to be accompanied. She accordingly caused a rumour to be spread that Louis had displayed symptoms of disease which rendered it probable that he could not long survive; and having done this, the troops were warned to hold themselves in readiness to leave the capital with his Majesty. Meanwhile the Due de Mayenne was despatched to M. de Condé to assure him on the part of the Regent that every respect should be paid to his representations, and at the same time letters of abolition were sent to all his adherents; although he was requested to retire from Poitou during the sojourn of their Majesties. To this demand Condé at first demurred; but finding that he could not succeed in securing the assistance of the reformed party, he at length consented to withdraw; and not venturing to return to Amboise, he took up his temporary residence at Châteauroux in Berry.

The retreat of the Prince was a great triumph for the warlike Bishop, who lost no time in proceeding to Tours (where the Court had already arrived), at the head of two hundred of his supporters, to entreat of their Majesties to proceed at once to Poitiers, in order to restore public confidence. His reception by the Regent was gracious in the extreme, nor did the young sovereign fail to express to the exulting prelate his own sense of obligation. At Poitiers the Court was met by the most enthusiastic acclamations: their Majesties honoured the election of the new mayor with their presence; and the lieutenant-generalship of the province was bestowed upon the Comte de la Rochefoucauld, an adherent of the Due de Guise.

From Poitiers the Court proceeded to Angers, on its way to Brittany; where, however, the Due de Vendôme did not wait its arrival to make his submission. The inertness of the Government upon previous occasions not having prepared him for the energy now exhibited by the sovereign, his alarm was correspondingly increased; and he hastened to meet their Majesties accompanied by all the nobility of the province. On approaching the King he laid his sword at his feet; and, as he knelt beside it, entreated his forgiveness of his past errors, and expressed his determination thenceforward to give him no further subject of complaint; upon which Louis commanded him to rise, and granted him a free pardon, which was ratified by the Regent. Letters patent were despatched by which he was reinstated in his government, and made irresponsible for all the excesses committed by his troops; and once more the son of Gabrielle d'Estrées was restored to the favour, if not to the confidence, of his sovereigns.

The assembly of the States then took place at Nantes, presided over by the Duc de Rohan; and during its meetings the King was apprised by its members of the enormities of which the followers of Vendôme had been guilty throughout the province, and respectfully solicited to exclude from the letters of abolition the authors of the frightful crimes of which the people had been made the victims. Among those of which they complained were the ransom of wives by their husbands, of daughters and young children by their parents, and of fields of grain by their owners. They, moreover, demanded justice for still greater enormities; and revealed to the Council the appalling fact that wealthy individuals had been subjected to torture, and in many instances even put to death, in order to obtain possession of their money; while others had been compelled to pay a heavy sum to save their dwellings and their property from the brand of the incendiary.

These frightful revelations excited the horror and indignation of Marie and her Council; and, in reply to their requisition, the complainants were assured that, although the King and his Government had preferred to pardon the injuries which they had personally sustained from the faction of M. de Vendôme, rather than visit them with the vengeance that they had legally merited, neither the sovereign nor those who held office under him could permit crimes like those detailed in their remonstrance to be exercised with impunity upon the people, and those crimes would consequently be punished with the most extreme rigour.

"That is merely a nom de guerre, Madame," was the ready reply, uttered in a tone sufficiently loud to reach the ears of the person named, who angrily exclaimed:

"You are a fool, Bassompierre!"

The assembly of the States-General at Sens had been fixed for the 10th of September, and would consequently have been held before the King had attained his majority, had not this arrangement been traversed by the Regent, who apprehended that they would seize so favourable an opportunity of thwarting all her views; and would not only demand the dismissal of the ministers and the Maréchal d'Ancre, but also, which was still more important, dissuade the sovereign, whose minority would terminate during their sitting, from permitting her to retain any share in the Government. The Prince de Condé and his partisans, whose interests undoubtedly demanded such a result, had, however, themselves been instrumental in the delay so earnestly desired by Marie; the hostile demonstrations of Vendôme in Brittany, and the ill-judged movements of Condé himself in Poitou, having furnished her with a plausible pretext for deferring the opening of the States until the King could preside over them in person; when the public declaration made before the Parliament by the young sovereign of his intention still to be guided by the counsels of his mother at once freed her from all her apprehensions; and she accordingly lost no time in transferring the Assembly from Sens to Paris, and proroguing it till the 10th of October.

In this circumstance were comprised all the errors of his reign; as even while deeply imbued with a sense of his dignity as the sovereign of a great nation, he exhibited the feeling only in acts of petty and obstinate opposition which tended to no result, and were productive only of a want of attachment to his person, and of respect for his opinions, which increased the arrogance of the great nobles, and fostered the ambition of his ministers.

It is now time that we should introduce an individual whose subsequent importance in the kingdom, humble as were his antecedents, was one source of the bitter trials to which the unfortunate Marie de Medicis was subjected during a long period of her life. The Comte de Lude had in his service a page, who was subsequently transferred to that of the young King; and it is the history of this apparently insignificant person which we are now called upon to detail to the reader. Albert de Luynes, his father, was the son of Guillaume Ségur, a canon of the cathedral of Marseilles, and of the housekeeper of the said ecclesiastic; and derived the name of Luynes from a small tenement upon the bank of that river, between Aix and Marseilles, which was the property of the canon, who preferred that his son should adopt the appellation of his farm rather than his own. There was, however, an elder brother, on whom the little property belonging to the priest was exclusively bestowed, and Luynes accordingly discovered that he must become the architect of his own fortunes. With all the fearless confidence of youth he made his way, as he best could, to the capital, where he enlisted as an archer of the bodyguard, displayed great aptitude and courage, and finally obtained the governorship of Pont-St.-Esprit. While thus prospering in the world he married, became the father of seven children, of whom three were sons; and died without suspecting that his name would be handed down to posterity through the medium of one of these almost portionless boys, whose sole inheritance was a small dairy-farm of the annual value of twelve hundred livres.

Such, however, was fated to be the case. Charles de Luynes had not been long at Court before he ascertained the passion of the young King for falconry, and having carefully trained two of his miniature hawks, he caused them to be offered in his name to his royal master. Louis was delighted with their docility and skill, and desired that the donor should be presented to him; when he found that the page was deeply versed in all the mysteries of that sport to which he was himself so much attached; and thenceforward he constantly commanded his attendance whenever he pursued his favourite pastime in the gardens of the Tuileries.

At this period M. de Luynes had already attained his thirtieth year; and, with admirable self-government, he had so thoroughly controlled himself as to disguise the salient features of his character. No one consequently suspected either his latent ambition, or the violent passions which he had craft enough to conceal; and thus the very individuals who were the objects of his hatred regarded him merely as a shallow and superficial young man, whose whole soul was in the puerile sports to which he had addicted himself.

It was not, however, solely to take small birds that De Luynes aspired when he thus found himself the chosen companion of the Dauphin; he had other talents which he exerted so zealously that he ere long made himself indispensable. Gifted with a magnificent person, insinuating manners, and that ready tact by which an indolent nature is unconsciously roused to excitement, he soon obtained an extraordinary influence over his royal playmate by the power which he possessed of overcoming his habitual apathy, and causing him to enter with zest and enjoyment into the pleasures of his age. Henri IV, who perceived with gratification the beneficial effect produced upon the saturnine nature of his son, and who was, moreover, touched by the fraternal devotion of the page, transferred him to the household of the Dauphin, and augmented his income to twelve hundred crowns; and thenceforward he became at once the companion, counsellor, and friend of the young Louis; and at the desire of the Prince he was created Master of the Aviary.

Time passed on. The Dauphin succeeded to the throne of his murdered father; the Regency tottered under the machinations of the great nobles; faction grew out of faction; cabals and conspiracies kept the nation in one perpetual state of anxiety and unrest; but the influence of De Luynes continued undiminished; and neither Marie de Medicis nor her ministers apprehended any danger from an association that was fated to produce the most serious consequences; while the Princes were equally disinclined to disturb the amusements in which the young monarch was so entirely absorbed as to pay little attention to the important events which succeeded each other around him.

As he grew older Louis became still more attached to his favourite. His discontented spirit made him irritable under every disappointment, and vindictive towards those by whom his wishes were opposed: he detested alike explanation and remonstrance, and from De Luynes he never encountered either the one or the other. Under the remonstrances of his mother he became sullen; to the arrogant assumption of the Princes and the Maréchal d'Ancre he opposed an apathetic silence which caused them to believe that it was unfelt; and it was only to De Luynes that he poured forth all his indignation, that he complained with bitterness of the iron rule of Marie, the insolence of his nobles, and the ostentatious profusion of the Italian: contrasting the first with his own helplessness, the second with the insignificance to which he was condemned, and the last with the almost penury to which he was compelled to submit.

No Prince had ever a more attentive or a more interested auditor. The enemies of the young Louis were also those of his favourite; for, as before remarked, the grandson of the reverend canon of Marseilles was alike vain and ambitious, and consequently inimical to all who occupied the high places to which he himself aspired. Moreover, the powerlessness and poverty of the young monarch necessarily involved those of his follower; and thus both by inclination and by interest De Luynes was bound to share the antipathies of his master.

His hatred of Concini is as easily explained; it being merely the jealousy of a rival favourite. The Italian was to the mother of the King precisely what De Luynes was to the King himself; and as Marie possessed more power than her son, so also was her follower more richly recompensed. Still, however, the game was an unequal one, of which the chances were all in his own favour; for the Maréchal was playing away the present, while his adversary was staking upon the future. The President Jeannin was also, as we have stated, especially distasteful to De Luynes, as he made no secret of his dissatisfaction at the frivolous existence of the young sovereign, and his desire that he should exchange the boyish diversions to which he was addicted for pursuits more worthy of his high station; while at the same time he exhibited towards the favourite an undisguised disdain which excited all the worst passions of its object.

Thus, insignificant as he appeared to those who were basking in favour, and who esteemed themselves too highly to waste one thought upon the obsequious dependent of a youthful and wayward sovereign, who suffered himself to be guided by those about him as though reckless of the result of their conflicting ambitions, it will be readily understood that De Luynes was laying up a store of antipathies which required only time and opportunity to develop themselves, and to bear the most bitter fruits; and already did the active favourite begin to enjoy a foretaste of the coming harvest. Ever earnest for right, Louis XIII never exhibited any personal energy to secure it, and consequently could effect nothing of himself; readily prejudiced, alike by his own caprices and by the representations of others, his very anxiety to act as became a monarch rendered him vulnerable to the intrigues of those whose interests tended to mislead his judgment; and as De Luynes, while sharing in his superstitious acts of overstrained devotion, or amusing his idleness by the futilities of falconry and other even less dignified sports, did not fail occasionally and cautiously to allude to more serious subjects, the boy-King listened eagerly to the recitals and opinions of his chosen friend, and finished by adopting all his views. This fact soon became so obvious to Concini, that the wily Italian, who dreaded lest the day might not be far distant when the son of Marie de Medicis would shake off the yoke of her quasi-regency and assert his own prerogative, resolved to secure the good offices of De Luynes, and for this purpose he induced M. de Condé to restore to the King the government of Amboise; representing to the Prince the slight importance of such a possession to a person of his rank, and the conviction which its voluntary surrender must impress upon the ministers of his desire to strengthen the royal cause. Let it not be supposed, however, that, at the period of which we write, such a surrender could for a moment be effected gratuitously; and thus, when the first Prince of the Blood was at length induced to yield to the representations of his insidious adviser, the terms of the bargain were fully understood on both sides; but even when he had succeeded in obtaining the consent of M. de Condé himself to the arrangement, Concini had still to overcome the scruples of the Queen-mother, to whom he hastened to suggest that the vacant government should be bestowed upon Charles de Luynes.

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