The age was an age of intrigue, treachery, and rebellion. The growing power of the nobles narrowed the authority of the throne. The incapacity of the King strengthened the pretensions of the princes. Spain, perpetually at war with France, sought its dismemberment by most disloyal conspiracies. Every disaffected prince or rebellious noble found a home at the Court of Philip, brother of Anne of Austria. Thus Louis knew nothing of royalty but its cares and dangers. As a boy, browbeaten and overborne by his mother, when arrived at an age when his own sense and industry might have remedied defects of education, he took it for granted that his ignorance was incapacity, his timidity constitutional deficiency. A prime minister was absolutely indispensable to such a monarch, and Louis at least showed some discernment in selecting for that important post the Bishop of Luçon (Cardinal Richelieu), the _protégé_ of his mother. Estranged from his wife, pure in morals, and correct in conduct, Louis, still a mere youth, yearned for female sympathy. A confidante was as necessary as a minister--one as immaculate as himself, into whose ear he could, without fear of scandal, murmur the griefs and anxieties of his life. Such a woman he found in Mademoiselle de Hautefort, maid of honour to the Queen. Her modesty and her silence first attracted him. Her manners were reserved, her speech soft and gentle. She was naturally of a serious turn of mind, and had been carefully educated. She took great apparent interest in all the King said to her. Her conversation became so agreeable to him, that he dared by degrees to confide to her his loneliness, his misery, and even his bodily infirmities, which were neither few nor slight. This intimacy, to a solitary young King who longed for affection, yet delicately shrunk from the slightest semblance of intrigue, was alluring in the highest degree. Long, however, ere Louis had favoured her with his preference she had given her whole heart to her mistress, Anne of Austria. Every word the King uttered was immediately repeated to the Queen, with such comments as caused the liveliest entertainment to that lovely princess, who treated the _liaison_ as an admirable joke, and entreated her maid of honour to humour the King to the very utmost, so as to afford her the greatest possible amount of amusement.