The army began to march, but the queen designedly retarded the movements of her son.

The cardinal was appointed generalissimo, and the king, who had taken upon himself the occupation of Savoy, was before long obliged by his health to return to Lyons, where he fell seriously ill.

The two queens hurried to his bedside; and they were seconded by the keeper of the seals, M.de Marillac, but lately raised to power by Richelieu as a man on whom he could depend, and now completely devoted to the queen-mother's party.
At the news of the king's danger, the cardinal quitted St.Jean-de- Maurienne for a precipitate journey to Lyons; but he was soon obliged to return to his army.

During the king's convalescence, the resentment of the queen-mother against the minister, as well as that of Anne of Austria, had free course; and when the royal train took the road slowly back to Paris, in the month of October, the ruin of the cardinal had been resolved upon.
What a trip was that descent of the Loire from Roanne to Briare in the same boat and "at very close quarters between the queen-mother and the cardinal!" says Bassompierre.

"She hoped that she would more easily be able to have her will, and crush her servant with the more facility, the less he was on his guard against it; she looked at him with a kindly eye, accepted his dutiful attentions and respects as usual, and spoke to him with as much appearance of confidence as if she had wholly given it him." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t.iii.