e sport of the winds and waves which shifted every hour in
that tempestuous court.

No man pretended to think of the State. Every man thought only of
himself. The royal exchequer was plundered with a celerity and cynical
recklessness such as have been rarely seen in any age or country. The
millions so carefully hoarded by Sully, and exhibited so dramatically by
that great minister to the enraptured eyes of his sovereign; that
treasure in the Bastille on which Henry relied for payment of the armies
with which he was to transform the world, all disappeared in a few weeks
to feed the voracious maw of courtiers, paramours, and partisans!

The Queen showered gold like water upon her beloved Concini that he might
purchase his Marquisate of Ancre, and the charge of first gentleman of
the court from Bouillon; that he might fit himself for the government of
Picardy; that he might elevate his marquisate into a dukedom. Conde,
having no further reason to remain in exile, received as a gift from the
trembling Mary de' Medici the magnificent Hotel Gondy, where the Dutch
ambassadors had so recently been lodged, for which she paid 65,000
crowns, together with 25,000 crowns to furnish it, 50,000 crowns to pay
his debts, 50,000 more as yearly pension.

He claimed double, and was soon at sword's point with the Queen in spite
of her lavish bounty.

Epernon, the true murderer of Henry, trampled on courts of justice and
councils of ministers, frightened the court by threatening to convert his
possession of Metz into an independent sovereignty, as Balagny had
formerly seized upon Cambray, smothered for ever the process of
Ravaillac, caused those to be put to death or immured for life in
dungeons who dared to testify to his complicity in the great crime, and
strode triumphantly over friends and enemies throughout France, although
so crippled by the gout that he could scarcely walk up stairs.

There was an end to the triumvirate. Sully's influence was gone for ever.
The other two dropped the mask. The Chancellor and Villeroy revealed
themselves to be what they secretly had always been--humble servants and
stipendiaries of Spain. The formal meetings of the council were of little
importance, and were solemn, tearful, and stately; draped in woe for the
great national loss. In the private cabinet meetings in the entresol of
the Louvre, where the Nuncius and the Spanish ambassador held counsel
with Epernon and Villeroy and Jeannin and Sillery,