a period in a state of dependence upon
Philip and Isabella, and deprived of any other alternative, she had next
sought to secure an asylum in the adopted country of her daughter, where
her near relationship to the Queen gave her a claim to sympathy and
kindness which she was aware that she had no right to exact from
strangers; and she consequently felt that the obligation which she
should there incur would prove less irksome to support than that which
was merely based on political interests; and, which, however gracefully
conferred, could not be divested of its galling weight.

Henriette, who had always been strongly attached to her royal mother,
and who, in her brilliant exile, pined for the ties of kindred and the
renewal of old associations, welcomed the proposal with eagerness; but
Charles I., who was apprehensive that by yielding to the wishes of the
Queen, he should involve himself in a misunderstanding with the French
Court; and who, moreover, disliked and dreaded the restless and
intriguing spirit of Marie de Medicis, as much as he deprecated the
outlay which her residence in the kingdom must occasion, hesitated to
grant her request.

Such was the extremity to which the ingratitude and ambition of a single
individual, whose fortunes she had herself founded, had, in the short
space of eighteen months, reduced the once-powerful Queen-Regent of
France; whose son and sons-in-law were the most powerful sovereigns
in Europe.

Since the execution of the Duc de Montmorency all the nobility of France
had bowed the head before the power of Richelieu; the greatest and the
proudest alike felt their danger, for they had learnt the terrible truth
that neither rank, nor birth, nor personal popularity could shield them
from his resentment; and while Louis XIII hunted at Fontainebleau,
feasted at the Louvre, and attended with as much patience as he could
assume at the constant performances of the vapid and tedious dramas with
which the Cardinal-Duke, who aspired to be esteemed a poet, incessantly
taxed the forbearance of the monarch and his Court, the active and
versatile pen of the minister was at the same time spreading desolation
and death on every side.

One unfortunate noble, whose only crime had been his adhesion to the
cause of Gaston d'Orleans, was condemned to the galleys for life; while
the Duc d'Elboeuf, MM. de Puylaurens, du Coudrai-Montpensier, and de
Goulas were tried and executed in effigy; the figures by whic