Mary de' Medici had given birth only four days before to an infant, Henrietta Maria, future queen of Charles I.of England.

The room was crowded with ministers and courtiers; Villeroy, the Chancellor, Bassompierre, and others, being stuck against the wall at small intervals like statues, dumb, motionless, scarcely daring to breathe.

The King, with his hands behind him and his grey beard sunk on his breast, was pacing up and down the room in a paroxysm of rage and despair.
"Well," said he, turning to Sully as he entered, "our man has gone off and carried everything with him.

What do you say to that ?" The Duke beyond the boding "I told you so" phrase of consolation which he was entitled to use, having repeatedly warned his sovereign that precisely this catastrophe was impending, declined that night to offer advice.

He insisted on sleeping on it.