Hardly, however, had the conversation begun, when a little door leading from the chapel of the Luxembourg into the Queen’s cabinet, which their Majesties had not thought of securing, gently opened, and the tall, scarlet-robed figure and pale, thin face of the man whose fate they had met to decide appeared to their astonished eyes. Richelieu, informed of the King’s return to Paris and his arrival at the Luxembourg, had formed a shrewd suspicion of what was in the wind, and had determined to be present at the interview between mother and son. Finding the doors of the ante-chamber locked, he had made his way to the cabinet along the gallery of the palace, and, on discovering the door of the cabinet also secured, had bethought himself of that which communicated with the chapel. “All is lost; here he is!” exclaimed the King, looking as guilty as a timid schoolboy detected by a stern master in some breach of discipline. The Cardinal advanced with a smiling face. “I will wager,” said he, “that their Majesties were speaking of me.” And then, turning to the Queen-Mother, he added: “Confess it, Madame.” “We were,” replied Marie. And then, beside herself with passion at the Minister’s audacity, she broke forth into a torrent of accusations and reproaches, charging him, amongst other things, with plotting to marry his niece to the Comte de Soissons and set him upon the throne in place of the King. The Cardinal appeared to quail before the tempest; he fell on his knees and protested his innocence; he wept; he was in despair. But this pretence of humility, instead of disarming the wrath of the Queen-Mother, served only to inflame it. “It is for you,” she cried, turning to the King, “to decide whether you intend to prefer a valet to your mother.” “It is more natural,” interposed Richelieu, “that it is I who should be sacrificed.” And he demanded pardon and permission to retire. The King remained silent; Marie overwhelmed him with a fresh storm of reproaches, and he quitted the room, convinced that his power was at an end. Louis XIII, dumbfounded by the violent scene of which he had been a witness, informed his mother that he was quite unable to come to a decision that day, and quitted the Luxembourg. On the following morning the King signed a despatch which his mother had extracted from him which gave the sole command of the army of Italy to Louis de Marillac and recalled Schomberg and La Force, who were adherents of the Cardinal. Then he departed for Versailles, without again seeing the Queen-Mother, but the Keeper of the Seals, Michel de Marillac, whom Marie had designated as Prime Minister in place of Richelieu, had orders to follow him.