I have before me one of these volumes, dated 1639, without name of editor or publisher. It bears the title: _Recueil de divers pièces pour servir a l'histoire_. Two thirds of its space are consecrated to the King's quarrels with his family. Mademoiselle must have learned from it many things which she has not the air of suspecting. Perhaps she found it convenient or agreeable to be ignorant of them. In the pages of this instructive volume none of her immediate relations appear to any advantage. Louis XIII. is invariably dry and bombastic, or constrained and affected; he shows no trace of emotion when, in his letter of 23 February, 1631, he informs the people that being placed in the extremity of choosing between our mother and our minister we did not even hesitate, because they have embittered the Queen our very honoured lady and mother against our very dear and very beloved cousin, Cardinal de Richelieu; there being no entreaty, no prayer or supplication, nor any consideration, public or private, that we have not put forward to soften her spirit; our said cousin recognising what he owes her, by reason of all sorts of considerations, having done all that he could do for her satisfaction; the reverence that he bears her having carried him to the point of urging us and supplicating us, divers times, to find it good that he should retire from the management of our affairs; a request which the utility of his past services and the interests of our authority have not permitted us to think of granting.... And recognising the fact that none of the authors of these differences continue to maintain their disposition to diverge from our royal justice, we have not found a way to avoid removing certain persons from our Court, nor even to avoid separating ourselves, though with unutterable pain, from the Queen, our very honoured lady and mother, during such time as may be required for the softening of her heart.... Another letter, from the King to his mother, is revolting in its harshness. After her departure from France, Marie de Médicis addressed to him some very tart pages in which she accused Richelieu of having had designs on her life. In the same letter she represented herself as flying from her son's soldiers: I will leave you to imagine my affliction when I saw myself in flight, pursued by the cavalry with which they had threatened me! so that I would be frightened and run the faster out of your kingdom; by that means constraining me to press on thirty leagues without either eating or drinking, to the end that I might escape from their hands. (Avesnes, 28 July, 1631.) Instead of feeling pity for the plaints of the old woman who realised that she had been conquered, Louis XIII. replied: