[1617.]

In the month of January the Count d'Auvergne, who had recently been liberated from the Bastille, was dispatched at the head of fourteen thousand men against the insurgent princes; and his departure was made a pretext for depriving the young King of the gentlemen of his household and of his body-guard, an insult which he deeply although silently resented. He had been attacked in the November of the preceding year by an indisposition which for a time had threatened the most serious consequences, and from whose latent effects he had not yet recovered. As time wore on, moreover, he was becoming more and more weary of the insignificance to which he was reduced by the delegated authority of his mother; and had easily suffered himself to be persuaded by de Luynes that her repeated offers to resign it, had merely been designed to make him feel the necessity of her assistance. As we have already shown, Louis XIII. derived little pleasure from the society of his young and lovely wife; he made no friends; and thus he was flung entirely into the power of his wily favourite; who, aware that the King could hate, although he could not love, was unremitting in his endeavours to excite him against Marie de Medicis and her favourite.