amours, which, at any other time,
such a marriage would have sanctified.

Mademoiselle de Chartres persisted in her resolution of becoming a nun,
although she still, under her novitiate, continued to enjoy all the
pleasures she could manage to introduce into the cloister. She had got
in her cell her guns and pistols, and a magnificent assortment of
fireworks, with which she amused her young friends every evening; but
she would not leave the convent, where her father went every Wednesday
to visit her.

The third person of the family who gave him uneasiness was Mademoiselle
de Valois, whom he suspected of being Richelieu's mistress, but without
ever being able to obtain certain proof--although he had put his police
on the watch, and had himself more than once paid her visits at hours
when he thought it most probable he should meet him. These suspicions
were also increased by her refusal to marry the Prince de Dombe, an
excellent match, enriched as he was by the spoils of La Grande
Mademoiselle. The regent had seized a new opportunity of assuring
himself whether this refusal were caused by her antipathy to the young
prince, or her love for the duke, by welcoming the overtures which
Pleneuf, his ambassador at Turin, had made for a marriage between the
beautiful Charlotte Aglae and the Prince de Piedmont. Mademoiselle de
Valois rebelled again, but this time in vain; the regent, contrary to
his usual easy goodness, insisted, and the lovers had no hope, when an
unexpected event broke it off. Madame, the mother of the regent, with
her German frankness, had written to the queen of Sicily, one of her
most constant correspondents, that she loved her too much not to warn
her that the princess, who was destined for the young prince, had a
lover, and that that lover was the Duc de Richelieu. It may be supposed
that this declaration put an end to the scheme.

The regent was at first excessively angry at this result of his mother's
mania for writing letters, but he soon began to laugh at this epistolary
escapade, and his attention was called off for the time by an important
subject, namely that of Dubois, who was determined to become an
archbishop. We have seen how on Dubois's return from London, the thing
had first been broached under the form of a joke, and how the regent had
received the recommendation of King George; but Dubois was not a man to
be beaten by a first refusal. Cambray was vacant by the death of the
Cardinal la Tre