Of the Interest of Princes

MEMOIRS OF THE

after the establishment of the Queen's Marie de Médicis regency, was the Duke of Sully Maximilien de Béthune, lead minister under Henry IV, whose services had made him a confidant of the late King, and had acquired him the ill will of others. For a virtue as eminent as his, accompanied by the favors of his Master, is subject to envy, which is a vice as common among men as it is unworthy of those who profess honor. Several people found themselves very keen on his ruin: the Chancellor, Villeroy Nicolas de Neufville de Villeroy, and the President Jeannin Pierre Jeannin, to strengthen their authority in the State, and to remove from their midst a man so precise in his duties that he shamed them, so clear-sighted in noticing faults, and so bold in exposing them; the Count of Soissons for a particular hatred he bore him; the Marquis of Ancre Concino Concini fearing to have him as an obstacle to his nascent fortune; all the other great men, because they judged him too good a manager of the public treasury; and the Prince of Condé when he arrived at Court, at the instigation of the Marshal of Bouillon, who had always envied him, and whetted his appetite for the confiscation of