When that everlasting war, which we call the Thirty Years War, fell into a lull, Francois and his bride made their court in Paris. The King, Louis XIII, was a poor creature, with a hundred valet's virtues, people said, and not a single master's virtue. He left all the kigndom's business to his mighty minister, Cardinal Richelieu. His own business, to get the queen a son, he postponed until twenty-two years after his marriage.
The queen was Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III, king of Spain. She was of her husband's age, and twelve years older than our Francois. She was tall, very white and blonde, full-figured and full-breasted, and had beautiful hands of which she was very proud. Her inseparable companon was the Duchesse de Chevreuse. The Duchesse possessed "a powerful beauty", records Cardinal Richelieu, who wooed her in vain.
Others were more fortunate, at least in a way. She was forever organizing conspiracies against the government, with her lovers as leaders. The conspiracies were always discovered and the lovers either jailed or executed. People compared her to the horse of Sejus, which carried all its riders to disaster.
Francois adored amd pitied the lovely, neglected queen. He was admitted to her intimacy and (it is universally presumed) to the alarming favors of the Duchesse de Chevreuse. He made dizzy plans to abduct the queen, to carry her off to Belgium. He was involved in the machinations of the Duchesse. When she was banished to a chateau in Touraine, he served as courier between her and the queen, bearing innocent-looking letter with treason between the lines in invisible ink.
It was arranged, during a certain crisis, that the queen should warn Mme. de Chevreuse if an order were issued for her imprisonment. If the queen should succeed in allaying suspicion, she would send her friend a Book of Hours bound in green. But if all were lost, she would send a red-bound book, and Mme de Chevreuse must immediately flee the kingdom.
At the height of the crisis the queen was rudely interrogated by Richelieu, but she faced down her inquisitor and kept her friend's secrets intact. She ordered a faithful maid of honor to send the Duchesse a Book of Hours symbolically bound. Green, stay quiet; Red, escape. But wait a bit; was it not the other way round? Repeat it a dozen times and the words become a colored blur. At any rate the queen or the maid of honor or Mme de Chevreuse made a mistake, and the recipient of the message took it to be: Flee for your life!
The Duchesse rubbed her face with soot and brick dust, donned a blonde male wig and a musketeer's jacket, breeches, and jack boots, and set forth with two menservants for the Spanish border. They galloped a hundred miles in twelve hours, to Ruffec, between Potiers and Angouleme. The horses were done in, and the Duchesse's tender flesh, unused to the chafe of breeches, bloodied the saddle.
Francois was in his chateau at Verteuil, only three miles from Ruffec. When he received the message that the Duchesse was at hand, his first impulse was to go fetch her and conduct her way into Spain himself, but he thought better of it and sent her horses and a carriage with a manservant to take her safely over the Pyrenees into Spain. Unfortunately, she learned that it would have been better to stay at home.
This experience taught Rochefoucaul a lesson in prudence. Richelieu died in December, 1642, and the king five months later. The queen began to rule as regent for her four year old son, Louis XIV.
It tells me the courage of Anne of Austria to help her friend as well as her standing up to the interrogation of the Cardinal who was so insistent upon her confessing to him a secret.
It is fascinating to me to realize that Rochefoucauld is so sympathetic to the Queen.
Since so many are so dubious of the birhright of the young prince, would suspicion ever have fallen upon Rochefoucauld? I wonder.
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