Anne went still further; she set no limits to her dissimulation and falsehood; in this extreme peril, she went so far as to turn against the courageous friend who had devoted herself for her. She would have embraced her as a liberator, had fortune declared itself in her favor; vanquished and disarmed, she abandoned her. As she had protested her horror of the conspiracy which had failed, and of her two imprudent and unfortunate accomplices, who mounted the scaffold without naming her, so, seeing the king and Richelieu incensed against Madame de Chevreuse, and determined to repulse the new attempts made by her family to obtain her recall, the queen, far from interceding for her former favorite, zealously joined with her enemies; and in order to mask her real sentiments, and to seem to applaud what she could not prevent, she asked as a special favor that the duchess should be kept far from herself and even from France. "The queen," writes Chavigny, the minister of foreign affairs to Richelieu,[1] "the queen asked me if it were true that Madame de Chevreuse would return; then, without waiting for an answer, she said that she would be sorry to see her again in France, for she now understood her true character; and she commanded me to entreat his Eminence in her behalf, that, if he wished to do any thing for Madame de Chevreuse, it should be done without permitting
- ↑ Archives of foreign affairs, ibid. Letter of the 25th of July.
letter and that of M. de Brassac, etc. Ibid, Chavigny to Richelieu, July 28: "The queen is so grateful for the obligations that she owes to Monseigneur, that it would be difficult to change the resolutions which she has formed of acting in future only by the counsels of his Eminence, and of placing herself wholly in his hands. She commands me to give him this assurance on her part." Ibid., from the same to the same, Aug. 12: "I am persuaded that the friendship which the queen expresses for Monseigneur is without dissimulation, and that she will certainly continue it, asking no other favor than to be near her children, yet without pretending to govern them or to meddle with their education, which she earnestly desires Monseigneur to superintend. She has commanded me to assure his Eminence of this, and that she is extremely impatient to see him."
