Leaving me in some danger of suffocation, and to my own reflections, among which the warnings of the Marquis de Gordon occupied a prominent place, the fair Countess had just time to conceal the key of the cabinet in her bosom, when the arras rose and fell, and Louis XIII. stood before her, with his broad plumed hat under his left arm, and wearing a short velvet cloak and long silver-hilted sword, tilting it up behind him as he continued to bow and advance with a mincing jaunty step, and ended by kissing the hand of the Countess thrice. At his neck hung the plain gold cross usually worn by him when he officiated as one of the twenty canons of the cathedral church of Ambrun--a solemn farce. Louis the Just--so named because in an age which was still infected by the poisonings and astrologies of the infamous Catherine de Medicis, he had been born under the sign of the Zodiac, called _Libra_, or the Balance--was not of a very amorous nature; but being left almost entirely alone even amid the splendour of his court, and being coldly treated by Anne of Austria his queen, who, like all the great people of Paris, followed in the retinue of the formidable Cardinal Richelieu, his minister and, scandal added, her lover, he had but two or three domestics whom he loved and trusted; and who, besides the huntsmen and hounds, were his chief favourites and companions. Among these was particularly Boizenval, his valet de chambre, who usually bore his presents and love letters to Clara, but whom he banished in 1637, for delivering all his tender billets doux--especially those addressed to the fair and unfortunate Fayette--_first_ to the tyrannical, prying and overweening Cardinal premier, to whose care, as well as to that of 'our blessed Lady,' Louis boasted he had consigned his crown and kingdom, and so troubled himself no more about them, believing like his successor, that 'they would last _his_ time.'