How long had people in France already waited for the day when the Queen of England would acquire influence over her husband! This came to pass for the first time in the course of the disputes with the Scots, after which a certain community of interest sprung up between the Episcopal Church and the English Catholics, both of whom had to expect their ruin from the rise of the Puritans. The Queen was useful to the King from her influence with the Catholics: cases had arisen in which her counsels had proved suited to the occasion: he began to listen to her. But when this period arrived, the Queen was no longer on the side of the French government. She felt affronted and rebuffed by the Cardinal: she thought him capable of allying himself with the Scots against England; and she espoused the cause of her mother with increasing warmth. In March 1639 the French ambassador expresses to his court his fears that the Queen of England, under the influence of [A.D. 1639.] the friends of the Queen-mother, would do everything which the latter might suggest to her against the interests of France. Many other opponents of Cardinal Richelieu also happened to be in England at that time;--Vieuville whom he had once overthrown, and De la Valette who had retired from France because he had allowed himself to be entangled in a plot against the Cardinal. Bellièvre reports that the latter was almost every day in the company of Madame de Chevreuse; that he had long conferences with the ministers of the Queen-mother, and on those occasions also saw the English Queen; that they all were in uninterrupted communication with the Spanish ambassador[144]. Already long before this time new projects of wide range had been spoken of, which were said to have been set afloat in England by means of the friends of the Queen-mother. At that time a Frenchman named Petit, who possessed property in Lorraine, and was engaged in chemical researches in London, paid a visit to the French ambassador, and told him that they had embraced the design of hazarding an attack upon Brittany: he said that they had selected a place (of which he did not mention the name), which might be captured with little trouble, and maintained without difficulty. Moreover people in France spoke of an impending alteration in the government on the death of the Cardinal, who was very weak and sickly. Vieuville said to the Duchess of Chevreuse that she would be wrong if she did not take care to be on the spot in France at the moment when such a change occurred. People expected everything from the preference Queen Anne felt for her. These hostile tendencies, which certainly were primarily of a personal character, but which nevertheless penetrated deeply into politics, now fell in with those differences in the conduct of political affairs which allowed no hope of union.