een's letter enclosed, was carried back by Madame
de Chevreuse and well received. I went immediately to Court, and was
taken up the back staircase by the Queen's train-bearer to the petit
oratoire, where her Majesty was shut up all alone. She showed me as much
kindness as she could, considering her hatred against M. le Prince and
her friendship for the Cardinal, though the latter seemed the more to
prevail, because in speaking of the civil wars and of the Cardinal's
friendship for me she called him "the poor Cardinal" twenty times over.
Half an hour after, the Cardinal came in, who begged the Queen to
dispense with the respect he owed her Majesty while he embraced me in her
presence. He was pleased to say he was very sorry that he could not give
me that very moment his own cardinal's cap. He talked so much of
favours, gratifications, and rewards that I was obliged to explain
myself, knowing that nothing is more destructive of new reconciliations
than a seeming unwillingness to be obliged to those to whom you are
reconciled. I answered that the greatest recompense I could expect,
though I had saved the Crown, was to have the honour of serving her
Majesty, and I humbly prayed the Queen to give me no other recompense,
that at least I might have the satisfaction to make her Majesty sensible
that this was the only reward I valued.

The Cardinal desired the Queen to command me to accept of the nomination
to the cardinalate, "which," said he, "La Riviere has snatched with
insolence and acknowledged with treachery." I excused myself by saying
that I had taken a resolution never to accept of the cardinalship by any
means which seemed to have relation to the civil wars, to the end that I
might convince the Queen that it was the most rigid necessity which had
separated me from her service. I rejected upon the same account all the
other advantageous propositions he made me, and, he still insisting that
the Queen could do no less than confer upon me something that was very
considerable for the signal service I was likely to do her Majesty, I
answered:

"There is one point wherein the Queen can do me more good than if she
gave me a triple crown. Her Majesty told me just now that she will cause
M. le Prince to be apprehended. A person of his high rank and merit
neither can nor ought to be always shut up in prison, for when he comes
abroad he will be full of resentment against me, though I hope my dignity
will be my protectio