But Madame de Chevreuse almost always brought misfortune to those whom
she interested in her projects. She had much spirit, ambition, and
beauty, and made full use of her charms to forward these enterprises of
hers. Already Cardinal Richelieu had accused the queen and her of
complicity in Chalais's plot against the king's life--for Chalais had
been her warm admirer--and the king believed in their guilt to the end
of his days. Again, when the young and handsome Lord Holland came to
France to arrange the marriage of the King of England to the sister of
the King of France, and quickly won the affection of Madame de
Chevreuse, the two lovers thought fit to celebrate their attachment by
inspiring a similar intrigue between the French queen and the Duke of
Buckingham, who had not so much as met one another. This astonishing
undertaking was successful. Buckingham came over to wed madame in the
name of his master, and his ardent love for the queen, which she fully
returned, deeply wounded both the king and Richelieu. The cardinal
sought his revenge through Lady Carlisle. That haughty and jealous
woman, to whom Buckingham had long been attached, noticed one night at a
ball in England that he was wearing diamonds which she had not seen
before, and contrived, unobserved, to detach them, in order that she
might send them to Richelieu. These diamonds had been the gift of the
King of France to his queen, and it was intended that the cardinal, by
showing them to the king, should prove the queen's weakness. But the
Duke of Buckingham discovered his loss the same night, and at once
suspected Lady Carlisle's design. He issued an immediate order that the
English ports should be closed, and that no one should be permitted,
under whatever pretext, to leave the country; and then, having had
exactly similar jewels prepared, he sent them to the Queen of France,
with an account of the whole matter.

It was at this time that the cardinal formed the project of the
destruction of the Huguenot party, and of laying siege to La Rochelle.
The Duke of Buckingham came with a powerful fleet to aid La Rochelle,
but in vain; the fortress was taken, and the duke was assassinated in
England. This murder gave the cardinal an inhuman joy; he jested at the
queen's sorrows, and began to hope again.

After the ruin of the Huguenots I returned from the army to court, being
now seventeen years old, and began to notice the state of affairs. The
queen-mother and the