ruin. Her experienced eye enabled
her promptly to perceive the most favourable point of attack whence to
assail the Queen, and the watchword she passed was to fan and keep alive
to the utmost the general feeling of reprobation which all the
proscribed, on returning to France, had aroused and disseminated against
the memory of Richelieu. This feeling was universal--among the great
families he had decimated or despoiled;--in the Church, too firmly
repressed not to be unmindful of its abasement;--in the Parliament,
strictly confined to its judicial functions, and aspiring to break
through such narrow limits. The same feeling was still alive in the
Queen's bosom, who could not have forgotten the deep humiliation to
which Richelieu had subjected her, and the fate for which he had
probably reserved her. These tactics succeeded, and on every side there
arose against the late violence and tyranny, and, by a rebound, against
the creatures of Richelieu, a storm so furious that Mazarin's utmost
ability was taxed to allay it.

Madame de Chevreuse likewise supplicated Anne of Austria to repair the
long-endured misfortunes of the Vendome princes, by bestowing upon them
either the Admiralty, to which an immense power was attached, or the
government of Brittany, which the head of the family, Caesar de Vendome,
had formerly held--deriving it alike from the hand of his father, Henry
IV., and as the heritage of his father-in-law, the Duke de Mercoeur.
This was nothing less than demanding the aggrandisement of an unfriendly
house, and at the same time the ruin of two families that had served
Richelieu with the utmost devotion, and were best capable of supporting
Mazarin. The Minister parried the blow aimed at him by the Duchess by
dint of address and patience, never refusing, always eluding, and
summoning to his aid his grand ally, as he termed it--Time. Before the
return of Madame de Chevreuse he had found himself forced to win over
the Vendomes, and to secure them in his interest. On Richelieu's death
he had strenuously contributed to obtain their recall, and had since
made them every kind of advance; but he soon perceived that he could not
satisfy them without bringing about his own destruction. The Duke Caesar
de Vendome, son of Henry IV. and _The Fair Gabrielle_, had early carried
his pretensions to a great height, and had shown himself restless and
factious as a legitimate prince. He had passed his life in revolts and
conspiracies, a