if she became a widow, because she had inflamed Anne of Austria’s resentment, and because she was the soul of the opposition, of the political intrigues, and of the secret plots against the Cardinal. If everything in her long correspondence seized by the latter, and existing in the archives,[87] justifies him for having exiled the dangerous Countess, if we find in it traces of the hopes of the two Queens, of the affections which bind them to Spain, of the successes they desire, of the reverses they hope for, nothing can be discovered that sullies Anne of Austria’s honour. The Countess de Fargis appears in it as the active instigator of cabals, but not as the complacent accomplice and the confidant of a crime. The truth is that _enceinte_ for the third time, and fearing a third accident, Anne of Austria did not wish the news of her condition to be spread abroad, or to arouse in the minds of the people a hope which the remembrance of the past rendered very uncertain of fulfilment. That this pregnancy was due to the reconciliation arising from the King’s illness, Richelieu himself attests, not as the doubtful author of a journal which, however, does not contain a single line really accusing the Queen, but as the indisputable writer of those innumerable letters, papers, and authentic documents, which have passed from the hands of the Duchess d’Aiguillon, his niece, into the archives of the State.[88] “It is suspected, not without good reason, that the Queen is _enceinte_,” he writes. “If this happiness befalls France, it ought to receive it as a fruit of the blessing of God and of the good understanding which has existed between the King and the Queen, his wife, for some time past.”[89] The same care which Anne of Austria took to conceal a third miscarriage, she had already shown with regard to a second, which occurred March 16, 1622, and at that time “they had hidden from the King as long as possible the destruction of his hopes.”[90] But from the first day that Richelieu entered upon power, nothing escaped the penetrating regard of the attentive Minister. He watched, he observed, he knew everything. Every member of the royal family was surrounded by some of his agents. If from this incessant surveillance, and from the written evidence in which it stands revealed, springs the proof that the Queen had coquetted with Buckingham, been swayed by the counsels of the Duchess de Chevreuse,[91] and faithful to the last recommendations of her father, Philip III., had been always ready to support the Spanish interest near the King; if, in a word, Richelieu represents her as a Queen but little French, he never insinuates that she has been a guilty spouse; and history can scarcely hope to be better informed, and certainly ought not to show itself more rigorous than the clear-sighted and pitiless Minister. FOOTNOTES: [46] _Les Mariages espagnols sous le règne d’Henri IV. et la Régence de Marie de Medicis_, by M. Perrens, Professor at the Lycée Bonaparte.