My daughter's death is the last, and, if we do not heed it, our downfall is at hand." Then he quietly made out an abstract of all his property, amounting to eight millions, with which he purposed to buy from the pope the usufruct of the duchy of Ferrara, and leave his son, besides, a fine inheritance.

But his wife continued her opposition; it would be cowardly and ungrateful, she said, to abandon the queen: "So that," cried he, "I see myself ruined without any help for it; and, if it were not that I am under so much obligation to my wife, I would leave her and go some whither where neither grandees nor common folk would come to look after me." This modest style of language did not prevent Marshal d'Ancre from occasionally having strange fits of domineering arrogance.

"By God, sir," he wrote to one of his friends, "I have to complain of you; you treat for peace without me; you have caused the queen to write to me that, for her sake, I must give up the suit I had commenced against M.de Montbazon to get paid what he owes me.

In all the devils' names, what do the queen and you take me for?
I am devoured to my very bones with rage." In his dread lest influence opposed to his own should be exercised over the young king, he took upon himself to regulate his amusements and his walks, and prohibited him from leaving Paris.

Louis XIII.