schemes of vengeance.
He saw on all sides only enemies armed against his life; and by a
supreme effort, to which a less vigorous intellect than his own must
have proved unequal, he rallied all the failing energies of nature to
pay back the universal debt of hatred which he was conscious that he
had incurred.

Such was the temper of his mind while the unfortunate Queen-mother was
yet dreaming of a reconciliation with her son, and an old age of honour
in her adopted country, through the agency of Rubens; but her still
sanguine spirit had betrayed her into forgetting the fact that the dying
tiger tears and rends its victim the most pitilessly in its death-agony;
and this was the case with the rapidly sinking minister, who was no
sooner apprised of the arrival of the painter-prince in the capital than
he despatched a letter to Philip of Spain to urge him to demand the
presence of Rubens on the instant at Madrid, and to detain him in that
city until he should hear further from himself. The request of so
dangerous an adversary as Richelieu was a command to Philip, who
hastened to invite the illustrious Fleming to his Court with all speed,
upon an affair of the most pressing nature; and when Rubens would have
lingered in order to fulfil a mission which he considered as sacred, he
was met by the declaration that Louis desired to defer the audience
which he had already conceded until after the return of the Maestro from
the Spanish capital. With a heavy heart Rubens accordingly left Paris,
aware that this temporary banishment was the work of the vindictive
Cardinal, who was thus depriving his unhappy benefactress of the last
friend on earth who had the courage to defend her cause; but as he drove
through the city gates he was far from anticipating that his freedom of
action was to be trammelled for an indefinite period, and that he was in
fact about to become the temporary prisoner of Philip IV.

Nor was the persevering cruelty of Richelieu yet satiated; he knew by
his emissaries that the end of Marie de Medicis was rapidly approaching,
but he was also aware that through the generous sympathy of Charles of
England and the King of Spain she was still in the receipt of a
sufficient income to ensure her comparative comfort; and even this was
too much for him to concede to the mistress whom he had betrayed; thus,
only a few months elapsed ere the pensions hitherto accorded to the
persecuted Princess were withheld by both monarchs[2