In 1600, at the time of her marriage, she had brought from Florence to Paris her nurse's daughter, Leonora Galigai, and Leonora's husband, Concino Concini, son_ of a Florentine notary, both of them full of coarse ambition, covetous, vain, and determined to make the best of their new position so as to enrich themselves, and exalt themselves beyond measure, and at any price.
Mary gave them, in that respect, all the facilities they could possibly desire; they were her confidants, her favorites, and her instruments, as regarded both her own affairs and theirs.

These private and subordinate servants were before long joined by great lords, court-folks, ambitious and vain likewise, egotists, mischief-makers, whom the strong and able hand of Henry IV.

had kept aloof, but who, at his death, returned upon the scene, thinking of nothing whatever but their own fortunes and their rivalries.

They shall just be named here pell-mell, whether members or relatives of the royal family or merely great lords the Condes, the Contis, the Enghiens, the Dukes of Epernon, Guise, Elbeuf, Mayenne, Bouillon, and Nevers, great names and petty characters encountered at every step under the regency of Mary de' Medici, and, with their following, forming about her a court-hive, equally restless and useless.
Time does justice to some few men, and executes justice on the ruck: one must have been of great worth indeed to deserve not to be forgotten.
Sully appeared once more at court after his momentary retreat to the arsenal; but, in spite of the show of favor which Mary de' Medici thought it prudent and decent to preserve towards him for some little time, he soon saw that it was no longer the place for him, and that he was of as little use there to the state as to himself; he sent in, one after the other, his resignation of all his important offices, and terminated his life in regular retirement at Rosny and Sully-sur-Loire.

Du Plessis- Mornay attempted to still exercise a salutary influence over his party.
"Let there be no more talk amongst us," said he, "of Huguenots or Papists; those words are prohibited by our edicts.