It was this very same unfortunate trait in Louis XIII’s character which was just then causing his great Minister the keenest anxiety. To assure his influence with the King it was necessary to be with him constantly, so as to be in a position to disabuse his gloomy and fickle mind of the suspicions which the enemies of the Cardinal were perpetually endeavouring to implant there. Well, Louis had grown weary of the monotony of the siege and had announced his intention of returning to Paris. The Cardinal was profoundly alarmed. To follow the King was to renounce La Rochelle, for no other than Richelieu was capable of finishing the work of Richelieu; to remain, to separate from the King, was to risk his political existence, for in Paris were his most dangerous enemies, who would not fail to take the fullest advantage of this opportunity his absence afforded them. How could he tell whether some malign influence might not succeed in undermining the inconstant monarch’s trust in him, and bringing the whole fabric of his ambition, upon which alone it was reared, crashing to the ground? For a moment he had almost determined to go with the King; but Père Joseph is said to have persuaded him to stay, pointing out that, if he went, the operations would almost certainly fail, and be followed by an outcry which would ruin him. Anyway, he decided to remain, and Louis, who appears to have recognised that his Minister’s resolution had something magnanimous about it, took his departure for Paris on February 10 with the promise that he would soon return, and left him with the title of “Lieutenant-General of the Army,” the marshals, Bassompierre and Schomberg, themselves being directed to take their orders from him. “It was a singular spectacle,” says Henri Martin, “this general in the red hat, with his staff in mitre and cowl. But the Cardinal knew how to render terrible what so nearly touched the grotesque. He had acted up to then in the shadow of the King; he was henceforth general, admiral, engineer, munitioner, intendant, paymaster. He communicated the fire of his soul to all who surrounded him. The Bishop of Mende, who was directing under him the construction of the mole, died meanwhile, giving orders that his body was to be interred in La Rochelle. The spirit of the soldiery and of the lesser nobility, who did not share the mental reservations of the grandees, rose to the same pitch.”