tted to return to Paris, where her son, perhaps to
console her for the loss of the Concinis, had built for her the Palais
de Luxembourg, intended as a reminiscence of her dear Italy, with its
Medicean architecture and Italian gardens and fountains. Here she held
her little court in great splendor, and here she wove her ineffectual
webs for Richelieu's defeat and downfall. It is said that at one time
Louis at her instigation had actually taken the pen in hand to sign the
order for his minister's disgrace, when that vigilant and omniscient
being, perfectly aware of what was occurring, appeared from behind the
curtains. And Louis, quailing before the superior will of a master,
sent his vicious, intriguing mother into perpetual banishment. And we
are told that Marie, the subject of those immortal canvases now at the
Louvre, was actually sheltered and fed by the great painter at his own
home in the day of her disgrace and poverty.

It is not strange that Peter the Great pronounced Richelieu the model
statesman! Their ideals were the same. The minister intended that
everything in France should lie helpless at the feet of royalty; that
kingship should absorb into itself every source of power. While
Cromwell was tearing down a throne in England and leading a king to a
scaffold, Richelieu, facing every class, current, and force, was making
the throne impregnable in France, and preparing a magnificent
inheritance for the infant Louis XIV., then in his cradle.

Queen-mother, nobles, parliaments, and Protestants must be taught to
obey. The Huguenots at the siege of La Rochelle, lasting fifteen
months, learned their lesson. The punishment for their revolt was the
loss of every military and political privilege. But although there
were to be no more political assemblies, the edict of Nantes was to be
rigidly enforced, and their rights and immunities under it made
inviolable. Louis the King saw his most intimate friend, Cinq Mars,
sent to the scaffold; his brother Gaston, Duke of Orleans, thrown into
the Bastille like a common prisoner; his mother in exile and poverty.
But he also saw himself without the trouble of governing, surrounded by
homage and adulation, towering high above everything else in France,
and was content.

The growing power of Austria and the ascendency of the Hapsburgs was,
as we have seen, the nightmare of Europe at this period. But the
Reformation was tearing the empire almost asunder. A Protestant