This Prince, who during his whole life longed for the moment when he should quit his state of tutelage,[73] and who, from being under the control of his governor, was to pass under his mother’s, then under Albert de Luynes’, and lastly, under Richelieu’s, joined to rather a fierce pride a true and just sense and exact knowledge of his inferiority. He detested the yoke, but he felt that it was necessary. Destined by his own incapacity to be for ever accomplishing the designs of others, he submitted to constraint, although constantly disposed to revolt. But he loved neither his mother, whom he discarded, nor De Luynes, whose death he did not regret. Richelieu alone, not only by the vast superiority of his genius, but especially by the obsequiousness of his language, by incessant precautions, by continually new artifices of humility, succeeded in seducing that unquiet and distrustful spirit, over which flattery had no power.[74] He ended by even attaching the King to himself, whatever may have been said about it, and by inspiring in him an affection which was bestowed quite as much upon the man as upon the indispensable Minister. Louis XIII. had the greatest solicitude for Richelieu, and paid him the most delicate attentions; and it can be affirmed, after a perusal of his letters, as yet unpublished, that these marks of lively friendship were not merely the result of self-interest.[75] Moreover, even when he was in possession of supreme authority, Richelieu, ever on the alert, showed himself to the last as studious in preserving it as he had been ingenious and supple in acquiring it. His efforts were constantly exerted to neutralize the influence of a Spanish Queen over a King whom he wished to maintain in the glorious policy of Henri IV. But he did not content himself with depriving the legitimate wife of his King of the whole of her power, which was a matter of no difficulty. Although incapable of criminal desires, since he could abstain from lawful pleasures, Louis XIII., sickly and morose as he was, reaping from love only jealousy and trouble, devoured by inquietudes and cares, had need of pouring out his complaints, of exposing his griefs, of unbosoming himself to a friendly heart, away from the pomp and noise which he fled. Richelieu always directed this inclination; and if he subjugated the King’s mind by the force of his own genius, if he fascinated him by the seductive power of his words, he watched over all his actions by means of spies, with whom he surrounded him, and governed even his soul through his confessors.[76] When the Prince’s affections, “purely spiritual, and enjoyments always chaste,” as says a contemporary, were bestowed on instruments, indocile to the directions of the ruling Minister, the latter knew how to conjure up scruples in the King’s mind, even for these pure connections, and which triumphed over his inclinations. To Madame de Hautefort succeeded, in the royal affections, Mademoiselle