It looked as if the French were to lose all advantages gained by their brilliant spring campaign. The whole aspect of affairs was alarming, for the danger was not only that which the Duke of Mantua’s imploring letters pressed upon the King. Imperial armies were massing on the eastern frontier of France, threatening Champagne, and it was necessary that a French force should be sent to watch them. The Duke of Lorraine’s loyalty was uncertain. It cannot have been without misgivings that Richelieu placed that gate of the kingdom in charge of his suspected enemy Louis de Marillac, with Monsieur, the light and treacherous, in nominal chief command. As to himself, he left Court intrigues behind him, left his master to the persuasions of men and women who hated him, and accepted the royal commission of “Lieutenant-Général de là les Monts,” which not only gave him the supreme command of the new Italian campaign, but made him the actual representative of Royalty in all matters political and military. No Constable of France had ever reached such a height of delegated power. At ten o’clock in the morning of December 29 he took leave, says Aubery, of the King and the Queens at the Louvre. “He then dined in the chamber of Madame de Combalet, his niece, then lady-in-waiting to the Queen-mother, and towards three o’clock in the afternoon he mounted into his coach, having with him the Cardinal de la Valette and the Duc de Montmorency, who were both at one _portière_, and the Maréchaux de Bassompierre and de Schomberg at the other. Outside the gates of the Louvre he was joined by a troop of a hundred cavaliers, all men of rank, who accompanied him for half a league outside the city, where his train and his guards awaited him.... Thus he took his way, in the depth of winter, to carry succour to Montferrat, leaving the Court and Paris in a season whose rigour is particularly felt in the open country.” Letters written by the Cardinal from Lyons show how his thoughts lingered behind at Paris, among the enemies and friends he had left there. Having obtained a piece of the True Cross from the Célestins at Avignon, he sent it, with a letter, to Marie de Médicis, by the hands of his niece, her lady-in-waiting. Enclosed with the treasure was a confidential letter to Madame de Combalet--one of his three friends in Marie’s household, the other two being his cousin Charles de la Meilleraye, captain of the guard, and Denys Bouthillier de Rancé, private secretary--asking her to beg from Her Majesty the favour of three lines in her own hand, to be shown to those who made it their business to inquire if she had written to him. Such lines would be of more value, he says, than whole sheets from the secretary, “qui est bon pour d’autres, mais non pour une antienne créature.”