"The aspect of affairs has greatly changed within the last few months," observed Richelieu, "and I am of opinion that the King would be gratified should the Grand Duke consent to receive his niece, in the event of her desiring to pass a short time under his protection, until a perfect reconciliation is effected between them; but you will see that should she once set foot in England, she will never leave it again, and will by her intrigues inevitably embroil us with that country." Again did M. de Gondi protest his entire ignorance alike of the movements of the exiled Queen and of the wishes of his sovereign, with a calm pertinacity which warned the Cardinal that further persistence would be impolitic, as it could not fail to betray his eagerness to effect the object of which he professed only to discuss the expediency; and, accordingly, the interview terminated without having produced the desired result.[192] Richelieu had, however, said enough to convince the Tuscan envoy that should the Grand Duke succeed in persuading the Queen-mother to reside at his Court, he would gratify both Louis and his minister; but neither he himself nor Marie de Medicis had ever contemplated such an arrangement. It was true, as the Cardinal had stated, that she had applied to Charles of England for shipping, but she had done so with a view of proceeding by Spain to join the Duc d'Orléans in Languedoc, little imagining that his cause would so soon be ruined. Mortified to find herself left for so long a period in a state of dependence upon Philip and Isabella, and deprived of any other alternative, she had next sought to secure an asylum in the adopted country of her daughter, where her near relationship to the Queen gave her a claim to sympathy and kindness which she was aware that she had no right to exact from strangers; and she consequently felt that the obligation which she should there incur would prove less irksome to support than that which was merely based on political interests; and, which, however gracefully conferred, could not be divested of its galling weight. Henriette, who had always been strongly attached to her royal mother, and who, in her brilliant exile, pined for the ties of kindred and the renewal of old associations, welcomed the proposal with eagerness; but Charles I., who was apprehensive that by yielding to the wishes of the Queen, he should involve himself in a misunderstanding with the French Court; and who, moreover, disliked and dreaded the restless and intriguing spirit of Marie de Medicis, as much as he deprecated the outlay which her residence in the kingdom must occasion, hesitated to grant her request. Such was the extremity to which the ingratitude and ambition of a single individual, whose fortunes she had herself founded, had, in the short space of eighteen months, reduced the once-powerful Queen-Regent of France; whose son and sons-in-law were the most powerful sovereigns in Europe.