France
whom Marie de Medicis sought to conciliate, but the Cardinal-Duke, who,
as she was conscious, held her fate in his hands. It was before him,
consequently, that she bowed down; it was to his sovereign pleasure that
she thus humbly deferred; for she felt that the long-enduring struggle
which she had hitherto sustained against him was at once impotent and
hopeless. Alas! she had, as she was fated ere long to experience, as
little to anticipate from the abject concession which she now made,
bitter as were the tears that it had cost her. The most annoying
impediments were thrown in the way of her messenger when he solicited an
audience of the sovereign, nor was he slow in arriving at the conviction
that his mission would prove abortive. Nevertheless, as the command of
Marie de Medicis had been that he should also deliver the letter to
Richelieu in person, and, as he had already done in the case of the
King, add to its written assurances his own corroborative declarations
in her name, and even communicate to him the offer of Chanteloupe to
retire to a monastery for the remainder of his life in the event of his
exclusion from the treaty, he was bound to pursue his task to its
termination, hopeless as it might be.[206]

When the envoy of the Queen-mother had delivered his despatches, and
fulfilled the duty with which he had been entrusted, the embarrassment
of the Cardinal became extreme. That the haughty Marie de Medicis should
ever have compelled herself to such humiliation was an event so totally
unexpected on his part that he had made no arrangements to meet it; and
it appeared impossible even to him that, under the circumstances, the
King could venture to refuse her immediate return to France. The crisis
was a formidable one to Richelieu, who, judging both his injured
benefactress and himself from the past, placed no faith in her
professions of forgiveness; for, on his side, he felt that he should
resent even to his dying hour much that had passed before she fled the
kingdom, as well as the libels against him which she had sanctioned
during her residence in Flanders. He had, moreover, as he asserted, on
several occasions received information that Chanteloupe meditated some
design upon his life; and that the Jesuit had stated in writing that he
could never induce the Queen-mother to consent to separate herself from
him, although he had entreated of her to leave him in the Low Countries
when she returned to France.[2