Both died with courage. "There was
no sign of anything weak in their words or mean in their actions. They
received the news that they were to die with the same visage as they
would have that of pardon," "in such sort that they who had lived like
devils were seen dying like saints, and they who had cared for nothing
but to foment duels serving towards the extinction of them." [_Memoires
d'un Favori du Due d' Orleans (Archives curieuses de l'Histoire de
France),_ t. ii.]

The cardinal had got Chalais condemned as a conspirator; he had let
Bouteville be executed as a duellist; the greatest lords bent beneath his
authority, but the power that depends on a king's favor is always menaced
and tottering. The enemies of Richelieu had not renounced the idea of
overthrowing him; their hopes even went on growing, since, for some time
past the queen-mother had been waxin jealous of the all powerful
minister, and no longer made common cause with him. The king had
returned in triumph from the siege of La Rochelle; the queen-mother hoped
to retain him by her at court; but the cardinal, ever on the watch over
the movements of Spain, prevailed upon Louis XIII. to support his
subject, the Duke of Nevers, legitimate heir to Mantua and Montferrat, of
which the Spaniards were besieging the capital. The army began to march,
but the queen designedly retarded the movements of her son. The cardinal
was appointed generalissimo, and the king, who had taken upon himself the
occupation of Savoy, was before long obliged by his health to return to
Lyons, where he fell seriously ill. The two queens hurried to his
bedside; and they were seconded by the keeper of the seals, M. de
Marillac, but lately raised to power by Richelieu as a man on whom he
could depend, and now completely devoted to the queen-mother's party.

At the news of the king's danger, the cardinal quitted St. Jean-de-
Maurienne for a precipitate journey to Lyons; but he was soon obliged to
return to his army. During the king's convalescence, the resentment of
the queen-mother against the minister, as well as that of Anne of
Austria, had free course; and when the royal train took the road slowly
back to Paris, in the month of October, the ruin of the cardinal had been
resolved upon.

What a trip was that descent of the Loire from Roanne to Briare in the
same boat and "at very close quarters between the queen-mother and the
cardinal!" says Bassompierre. "She hoped that she w