eloquent and enthusiastic;
Marillac aspired to build up his fortunes on the ruins of those of
Richelieu, and to succeed him in his office as prime minister; and Marie
de Medicis clung with tenacious anxiety both to the Emperor of Germany
and the King of Spain, who had alike approved of her determination to
effect the overthrow of the man whom she had herself raised to power,
and by whom she had been so ungratefully betrayed. Marie and her
counsellors were, however, by no means a match for the astute and
far-reaching Richelieu, who had, by encouraging the belligerent tastes
of the King, and still more by so complicating the affairs of the
kingdom as to render them beyond the comprehension and grasp of the weak
monarch, and to reduce him to utter helplessness, succeeded in making
himself altogether independent of his benefactress, none of whose
counsellors were capable of competing for an hour with his superior
energy and talent. Aware of his advantage, Richelieu consequently
despised the opposition by which he was harassed and impeded in his
projects; and while he affected to pay the greatest deference to the
representations of the Queen-mother, he persisted in his enterprises
with an imperturbability which ensured their success.

One circumstance, however, tended greatly to embarrass the
Cardinal-minister. Anne of Austria, indignant at the protracted neglect
of the King, and the utter insignificance to which she was consequently
condemned, openly espoused the party of the Queen-mother, and, in her
turn, loudly complained that the King should be induced by the egotism
of the Cardinal to expose his health to the chances of warfare and the
dangers of unwholesome climates; declaring that Richelieu, not satisfied
with retaining his royal master for several months amid the marshes of
Aunis, was now seeking to destroy him by exposure to the snows and
storms of the Alps during the depth of winter.

Irritated by these open accusations, and still more alarmed lest the
egotism of the monarch should lead him to adopt the same opinion, the
Cardinal urged the necessity of placing at the head of so considerable
an army as that which was about to march into Italy, a general whose
name alone must suffice to awe the enemy against whom it was directed;
but even this subterfuge, welcome as it was to the vanity of Louis, did
not produce the effect which he had hoped; for the Queen-mother,
profiting by a private interview with the King, ea