Bérulle was largely responsible. [Illustration: CARDINAL PIERRE DE BÉRULLE FROM AN ENGRAVING] The Bishop of Mende was a very different person from the austere Oratorian. A member of one of the noblest houses in France, high-spirited, cultured, and fascinating, he owed a position to which his twenty and odd years would not have entitled him to the fact that he was a relative and intimate friend of Richelieu. He knew how to win the affection of the Queen, who on one occasion warmly recommended him to the Pope,[35] and who, when he left her to pay a visit of a few weeks to his native land, wrote requesting his return, as she could not get on without him; but the King frankly detested him, and years later, when the Bishop was in his grave, remembered angrily the arrogance with which the latter was wont to enter his wife's private apartments at any hour that pleased him. That the charges of indiscretion brought against him by the English were not unfounded may be gathered not only from the amazing audacity of his proposal to place the crown on the Queen's head in Westminster Abbey--a proposal which led to her never being crowned at all[36]--but also from the reluctant admission of his friend Tillières that he was too young for his post, and from an admonitory letter addressed to him by his masters in Paris, urging him to moderate his zeal and to bridle his fiery tongue. But there were reasons other than personal, of which Charles and his subjects were certainly in some degree aware, for disliking and distrusting Henrietta's household. One of the causes of the extraordinary success of Richelieu's policy is no doubt to be sought in the accuracy and range of the information at his command, which was furnished by persons in every country, who, though a prettier name might be given to them, were, to speak plainly, his spies. Some of them were French subjects abroad, others were subjects and often even servants of the King in whose land they lived, who were persuaded by the powerful argument of a pension to engage in this traffic in news.[37] By this means the Cardinal found out most things that it was to his interest to know, and often, while he was professing goodwill and affection to some hapless wight who was in his power, he was, at the same time, collecting information to be used against him.