For the first few years of Richelieu’s ministry he was working against tremendous odds. His health was terribly bad. All through the winter of 1625-6 he suffered from fever and constant headaches, so that he was often forced to leave Paris in the midst of his work and to fly for rest and change to one of his country-houses. Once at least, when summoned back on public affairs to the Petit-Luxembourg, he writes to Claude Bouthillier: “I am so persecuted by my head ... my pain is excessive.... I am so persecuted by my head, I know not what to say. But even were I worse, I would rather die than not drag these important affairs to a conclusion.” At this very time, in the spring of 1626, the discontent he had already caused in high quarters began to show its teeth, and the first of many conspiracies was formed against him. He had very few sincere friends except in his own family, and among the men who worked with him, and whom he entirely trusted. Marie de Médicis, indeed, had not yet actually broken with him; they were apparently on the same terms as before. But in actual fact the distance between them was widening every day. Influenced by Bérulle, the Queen-mother had become more dévote; she disapproved of the long delay in making peace with Rome and Spain, and of the treaty with the Huguenots, helped on by the intervention of heretic England. She was angry with England for other reasons: the presumption of Buckingham, the treatment of the young Queen’s French household. All these things were turning her mind against Richelieu’s policy. And he was not very diplomatic with regard to his patroness. He showed too plainly perhaps that her friendship was no longer of the highest importance to him. He had gained what he wanted; he was the first man in France, indispensable to the King. Ill, impatient, overworked, straining every nerve to keep his hold on affairs and his influence with his royal master, it was hardly strange that he should fail a little in grateful attention to a stupid elderly woman, even though he owed her everything. But Marie de Médicis was not responsible for this first great “storm,” as the Cardinal calls it in his Memoirs. The clouds rolled up round the King’s young brother, Monsieur, Duc d’Anjou, and were brought to a head by Richelieu’s decision that he should marry Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the only child of the last lord of Champigny and the present possessor of his enormous wealth. [Illustration: GASTON DE FRANCE, DUC D’ORLÉANS]