gentleman only, to go and take refuge in Flanders, whence she arrived
before long at Brussels.

The cardinal's game was definitively won. Mary de' Medici had lost all
empire over her son, whom she was never to see again.

The Duke of Orleans meanwhile had taken the road to Lorraine, seeking a
refuge in the dominions of a prince able, crafty, restless, and hostile
to France from inclination as well as policy. Smitten, before long, with
the duke's sister, Princess Margaret, Gaston of Orleans married her
privately, with a dispensation from the Cardinal of Lorraine, all which
did not prevent either duke or prince from barefacedly denying the
marriage when the king reproached them with having contracted this
marriage without his consent. In the month of June, 1632, the Duke of
Orleans entered France again at the head of some wretched regiments,
refuse of the Spanish army, given to him by Don Gonzalvo di Cordova. For
the first time, he raised the standard of revolt openly. For him it was
of little consequence, accustomed as he was to place himself at the head
of parties that he abandoned without shame in the hour of danger; but he
dragged along with him in his error a man worthy of another fate and of
another chief. Henry, Duke of Montmorency, marshal of France, and
governor of Languedoc, was a godson of Henry IV., who said one day to
M. de Villeroy and to President Jeannin, "Look at my son Montmorency, how
well made he is; if ever the house of Bourbon came to fail, there is no
family in Europe which would so well deserve the crown of France as, his,
whose great men have always supported it, and even added to it at the
price of their blood." Shining at court as well as in arms, kind and
charitable, beloved of everybody and adored by his servants, the Duke of
Montmorency had steadily remained faithful to the king up to the fatal
day when the Duke of Orleans entangled him in his hazardous enterprise.
Languedoc was displeased with Richelieu, who had robbed it of some of its
privileges; the duke had no difficulty in collecting adherents there; and
he fancied himself to be already wielding the constable's sword, five
times borne by a Montmorency, when Gaston of Orleans entered France and
Languedoc sooner than he had been looked for, and with a smaller
following than he had promised. The eighteen hundred men brought by the
king's brother did not suffice to re-establish him, with the queen his
mother, in the kingdom; the go