At the beginning of March, La Vieuville complained to the King that, with the connivance of Puisieux, when he had been Secretary of State for War, Bassompierre had been drawing every year for the maintenance of the Swiss 24,000 livres more than he was entitled to. The marshal, on learning of this, angrily denied that he had received a sol more than was justly due, and proceeded to prove his statement in the presence of the King, when high words passed between him and the Minister. Nevertheless, his accounts were not passed, and the matter remained in abeyance. La Vieuville, with all his faults, showed both energy and ability; and he was the first to reverse the disastrous Spanish policy of the Court. He recalled the Commandeur de Sillery, the French Ambassador to Rome, where he had shown himself as feeble and undecided as his relatives in Paris; sent the Marquis de Cœuvres, a good soldier and a skilful diplomatist, as Ambassador to Switzerland, to urge the Cantons, both Protestant and Catholic, to go to the assistance of the Grisons; concluded offensive and defensive alliances with the Dutch, which assured to them a subsidy for the next two years; and warmly supported the English marriage-project. But he made many enemies besides Bassompierre, and feeling the need of conciliating the Queen-Mother, who for some weeks had absented herself from Court, as a protest against the treatment of Richelieu, he promised to obtain for her favourite admission to the Council. This was no easy task, for the mediocrities who had so long surrounded Louis XIII had succeeded in inspiring him with their own dread of this great man, and the King was, in consequence, very unwilling to entrust him with office, added to which he still associated him with the followers of Concini, all of whom he held in aversion. “There is a man who would like to be of my Council,” he observed one day to Praslin, as Richelieu passed by; “but I cannot bring myself to this step, after all he has done against me.” “I know him better than you do,” he said on another occasion to Marie de’ Medici, when she had been urging the Cardinal’s claims upon him; “he is a man of unmeasured ambition.” Now, however, he did not withstand the request of his Minister, reinforced by the solicitations of the Queen-Mother, and on April 29, 1624, Richelieu re-entered the Council. * * * * * Meanwhile, La Vieuville had resumed hostilities against Bassompierre, whose intimacy with the King he appears to have regarded as the chief obstacle in the path of his ambition. This time he launched a far more serious charge against the marshal than that of drawing more money on account of the Swiss than he was entitled to, and accused him of being a pensioner of Spain.