formidable, and by depriving her adherents of a pretext for opposing his authority, to rid himself of a danger which augmented from day to day. Too readily the prey of her passions, Marie de Medicis exulted in this conviction; and had Louis and his ministers been wise enough to accept her reluctance as a refusal to return to Court, and abandoned all attempts to change her determination, it is probable that this simulated indifference, and the powerlessness to which it must ere long have reduced both herself and her followers, would have caused her immediate compliance; but, bent upon compelling her obedience, they, by successive endeavours to overcome her disinclination to resign the comparative independence to which she had attained, only played into the hands of the astute Bishop, by strengthening her resolution to resist. Shortly after the departure of the Princes of Savoy, the Capuchin Father Joseph du Tremblay,[36] the confidential friend of Richelieu, was ordered to proceed in his turn to Angoulême, and to endeavour to induce Marie de Medicis, with whom the courtly monk was known to be a favourite, to resume the position to which she was entitled as the widow of one sovereign and the mother of another; and as a preliminary step, to meet the King according to his expressed wish, before his return to the capital. This was, however, only another false step on the part of De Luynes, as the reverend father felt by no means disposed to thwart the measures of the man to whom he looked for his own future advancement; and his mission, in consequence, so signally failed that the suspicions of the Court party were once more aroused against Richelieu, although they were unable wholly to fathom the depth of his subtle policy. These suspicions were, moreover, strengthened by the fact that a new letter, addressed by the King to his mother, full of the most pressing entreaties that she would divest herself of her distrust, and confide in his affection (which letter was delivered to her by the Duc de Montbazon, the father-in-law of De Luynes), produced no better result. In vain did the Duke represent the earnest desire of Louis to terminate a state of things so subversive of order, and so opposed to all natural feeling, and assure her of the sincerity with which his Majesty invited her to share his power; Marie, prompted by the astute prelate, refused to yield. "I am not invited to return to Court," she said bitterly; "I am to be constrained to do so; but I will consent only upon one condition. Let the Duc de Mayenne be my surety that I shall be treated as becomes my dignity, both by the King and his favourite, and I will again enter the capital. Without this safeguard I will not place myself in the power of an adventurer."