"Ah! my daughter, I am then to die or be made a prisoner. Is the King about to leave me here? What does he intend to do with me?' "Anne of Austria, bathed in tears, could only reply by throwing herself into the arms of the helpless victim; and for a while they wept together in silence. "The wife of Louis had, however, little time to spend in speechless sympathy, and ere long she communicated to Marie de Medicis the cruel resolution of the King, and conjured her to bear her banishment with patience until they should be revenged upon their common enemy, the Cardinal. They then parted with mutual expressions of sympathy and affection; and, as it ultimately proved, they never met again." [149] During the course of this brief and melancholy interview, the young Queen, with the assistance of her royal mother-in-law, completed her toilet; and then after their hurried leavetaking hastened to rejoin the King, who had already evinced great impatience at her delay. But however consoled she might have been by her own escape on this occasion, Anne of Austria was nevertheless condemned to suffer her share of humiliation, for she had no sooner reached the Convent than Louis formally presented to her Madame de la Flotte as her First Lady of Honour, and her grand-daughter Mademoiselle de Hautefort as her next attendant; while upon her expressing her astonishment at such an arrangement, she was informed that the Comtesse du Fargis, who was replaced by Madame de la Flotte, had been banished from the Court, and that other great ladies had shared the same fate.[150] The will of Richelieu had indeed proved omnipotent. Not one of those whom he had doomed to disgrace was suffered to escape without submitting to humiliations degrading to their rank. The unfortunate Princesse de Conti, the sister of the Duc de Guise, whose only crime was her attachment to her royal mistress, and her love for Bassompierre, was exiled to Eu; where her separation from the Queen, and the imprisonment of the Maréchal, so preyed upon her mind that she died within two months of a broken heart; while all was alarm and consternation in the capital, where the greatest and the proudest in the land trembled alike for their lives and for their liberties. Of all the victims of the Cardinal the Queen-mother was, however, the most wretched and the most hopeless. So soon as Anne of Austria had quitted her apartment, feeling herself overcome by the suddenness of the shock to which she had been subjected, she caused her physician M. Vautier to be summoned, and was abruptly informed that he had been arrested, and conveyed a prisoner to Senlis. "Another!" she murmured piteously. "Another in whom I might have found help and comfort. But all who love me are condemned; and Richelieu triumphs! My history is written in tears and blood. Heaven grant me patience, for I am indeed an uncrowned Queen, and a childless mother."