e de Motteville, "can the remembrance of those
few brief words be effaced from my mind. I saw at that moment, by the
fire that flashed in the Queen's eyes, and in fact by what happened on
that very evening and next day, what it is to be a female sovereign when
enraged, and with the power of doing what she pleases."[5] Had the
cautious lady-in-waiting been less discreet, she might have added,
"especially when that sovereign lady is a woman in love."

[5] Memoires, vol. i. p. 185.

The break-up and dispersion of the _Importants_ once decided upon, the
first step was to arrest Beaufort, and bring him to trial. To this the
Queen gave her consent. Of the authority Mazarin had acquired, such
proceeding was a striking indication, and showed how far Anne of Austria
might one day go in defence of a minister who was dear to her. The Duke
de Beaufort had been, before her husband's death, the man in whom the
Queen placed most confidence, and for some time he was thought destined
to play the brilliant part of a royal favourite. In a brief space he had
effectually thrown away his chance by his presumptuous conduct, his
evident incapacity, and yet more by his public _liaison_ with Madame de
Montbazon. Still the Queen had shown a somewhat singular weakness in his
favour, and at the expiration of three short months to sign an order for
his arrest was a great step--necessary, it is true, but extreme, and
which was the manifest sign of an entire change in the heart and
intimate relations of Anne of Austria. The dissimulation even with which
she acted in that affair marks the deliberative firmness of her
resolution.

The 2nd of September, 1643, was truly a memorable day in the career of
Mazarin, and we may say, in the annals of France; for it witnessed the
confirming of the royal power, shaken to its base by the deaths of
Richelieu and Louis XIII., and the ruin of the party of the
_Importants_.

On the morning of the 2nd, all Paris and its Court rang with the report
of the ambuscade laid for Mazarin the night previous, between the Louvre
and the Hotel de Cleves. The five conspirators who had joined hands with
Beaufort in it had taken flight and placed themselves in safety.
Beaufort and Madame de Chevreuse could not imitate them: flight for them
would have been a self-denunciation. The intrepid Duchess therefore had
not hesitated to appear at Court, and she was at the Regent's side
during the evening of the 2nd together with another