Thus the Bishop of Luçon was deprived of the royal patron from whom he had hoped so much. But he seems to have wasted very little time in mourning his own and the country’s loss. His first thought was to bring himself before the Queen, to gain a footing in the new Court, different in many ways from the old. And this did not appear to be a difficult task for a young and quick-witted man. The day of old men, old soldiers, old courtiers and friends of “le Béarnais,” was over. The Bishop of Luçon had already friends and supporters in the Regent’s intimate circle. His brother and brother-in-law, Henry de Richelieu and René de Vignerot, Seigneur du Pont-de-Courlay, were among her most favoured courtiers. The Marquise de Guercheville, her lady of honour, accustomed to courts since the days of Catherine de Médicis, was a connection on the Du Plessis side; and two at least of the young maids of honour bore familiar family names--Pont-de-Courlay, Meilleraye. At this time, too, the Père de Bérulle, Richelieu’s personal friend, had great influence with the Queen, and the same might be said of the Père Cotton, the late King’s confessor. The Jesuits did not yet regard Richelieu as an enemy. It was not till after long delays, however, that the Bishop of Luçon reached the Queen-Regent’s distinguished favour and the front of affairs. His first step was a hurried and an unlucky one. On the 22nd of May he wrote out a curious document, a kind of oath of allegiance and declaration of loyalty to the young King and his mother, from himself as Bishop and Baron, his dean, canons, and clergy. He sent this paper to his brother in Paris, begging him to deliver it into the Queen’s own hands. Henry de Richelieu’s worldly wisdom at once refused this favour. Such zeal was quite out of place, he said: _Cela ne se fait pas_: nobody else in the kingdom had done anything of the sort, and he, an experienced courtier, would not allow his forward brother to push himself by such means. Bouthillier was employed to send this discouraging reply to the Bishop, whose restless eagerness it hardly served to check. It convinced him, indeed, that nothing was to be done from a distance, and that the best of relations and friends would not help a man who was not on the spot to help himself. Early in June we find him writing to Madame de Bourges about a permanent lodging in Paris. As he intends to spend some time there every year, he wants advice as to situation and cost, also as to furniture, tapestry, plate, wine, etc. Poor as ever in purse, he is no less determined to make a good show in the capital: “C’est grande pitié que de pauvre noblesse, mais il n’y a remède: contre fortune bon cœur.”