He was a favourite with most of his neighbours, clerical and lay. His correspondence bears witness to the wideness of his acquaintance and interests, both public and private; people appealed to him as a friend, an arbitrator, and he never disappointed them. He was courteous, kind, even tender in his language: “episcopal and benign.” He was on the politest terms with such of the great men as occasionally crossed his path: the Duc de Sully, governor of Poitou, now no longer a courtier and an absentee; the Duc de Villeroy, still in office, father of his friend M. d’Alincourt, and others of high rank and importance. His letters to such men as these, as well as to his more intimate friends, might have foreshadowed his coming greatness for those who had eyes to see. To the general company, however, the writer whose well-turned assurances and compliments had such a background of passionate ambition for his own and for his country’s glory, was nothing but a clever phrase-maker, a young man of seven-and-twenty who could talk and argue, convert a few Protestants, deal discreetly with the wrangles of religious women. And outside a limited circle the name of Richelieu was probably unknown, except as that of a pensioned courtier of the Regency. While the Bishop of Luçon waited for his opportunity, political and religious unrest was deepening in France. Henry IV.’s policy of opposition to the House of Austria and alliance with Savoy, Holland, and the German Protestants, had been set aside very early in the new reign, and two royal marriages were arranged to bind France closer to the Holy See and Catholic Europe. Louis XIII. was to be married to the Infanta Anna of Spain--known to history as Anne of Austria--and his eldest sister, Élisabeth, to the Infant of Spain, afterwards Philip IV. These marriages seem to have pleased nobody in France except the Regent, her immediate Court circle and her Ministers, whose only hope of keeping their place lay in her favour. The Foreign Secretary, Villeroy, the Chancellor, Brûlart de Sillery, the Connétable de Montmorency, were among the Queen’s advisers in this affair. Most of the nobles, and especially the princes, were more or less in opposition; the strengthening of the Crown by so close an alliance with Spain did not suit their interests. Henry IV. himself, when the project was first laid before him by the Spanish Ambassador in 1610, had not listened encouragingly.