and ending by propounding the question of his own retirement or the
queen-mother's.  "His Majesty, without hesitation, made his own choice,
taking the resolution of returning to Paris and of begging the
queen-mother to retire for the time being to one of his mansions,
particularly recommending Moulins, which she had formerly expressed to
the late king a wish to have; and, in order that she might be the better
contented with it, he offered her the government of it and of all the
province."  Next day, February 23, 1631, before the queen-mother was up,
her royal son had taken the road back to Paris, leaving Marshal D'Estrees
at Compiegne to explain to the queen his departure and to hasten his
mother's, a task in which the marshal had but small success, for Mary de'
Medici declared that, if they, meant to make her depart, they would have
to drag her stark naked from her bed.  She kept herself shut up in the
castle, refusing to go out and complaining of the injury the seclusion
did to her health; then she fled by night from Compiegne, attended by one
gentleman only, to go and take refuge in Flanders, whence she arrived
before long at Brussels.

The cardinal's game was definitively won.  Mary de' Medici had lost all
empire over her son, whom she was never to see again.

The Duke of Orleans meanwhile had taken the road to Lorraine, seeking a
refuge in the dominions of a prince able, crafty, restless, and hostile
to France from inclination as well as policy.  Smitten, before long, with
the duke's sister, Princess Margaret, Gaston of Orleans married her
privately, with a dispensation from the Cardinal of Lorraine, all which
did not prevent either duke or prince from barefacedly denying the
marriage when the king reproached them with having contracted this
marriage without his consent.  In the month of June, 1632, the Duke of
Orleans entered France again at the head of some wretched regiments,
refuse of the Spanish army, given to him by Don Gonzalvo di Cordova.  For
the first time, he raised the standard of revolt openly.  For him it was
of little consequence, accustomed as he was to place himself at the head
of parties that he abandoned without shame in the hour of danger; but he
dragged along with him in his error a man worthy of another fate and of
another chief.  Henry, Duke of Montmorency, marshal of France, and
governor of Languedoc, was a godson of Henry IV., who said one day to
M. de Villeroy and to President Jeannin, "Look at my son Montmorency, how
well made he is; if ever the house of Bourbon came to fail, there is no
family in Europe which would so well deserve the crown of France as, his,
whose great men have always supported it, and even added to it at the
price of their blood."  Shining at court as well as in arms, kind and
charitable, beloved of everybody and adored by his servants, the Duke of
Montmorency had steadily remained faithful to the king up to the fatal
day when the Duke of Orleans entangled him in his hazardous enterprise.
Languedoc was displeased with Richelieu, who had robbed it of some of its
privileges; the duke had no difficulty in collecting adherents there; and
he fancied himself to be already wielding the constable's sword, five
times borne by a Montmorency, when Gaston of Orleans entered France and
Languedoc sooner than he had been looked for, and with a smaller
following than he had promised.  The eighteen hundred men brought by the
king's brother did not suffice to re-establish him, with the queen his
mother, in the kingdom; the governor of Languedoc made an appeal to the
Estates then assembled at Pezenas; he was supported by the Bishop of Alby
and by that of Nimes; the province itself proclaimed revolt.  The sums
demanded by the king were granted to the duke, whom the deputies prayed
to remain faithful to the interests of the province, just as they
promised never to abandon his.  The Archbishop of Narbonne alone opposed
this rash act; he left the Estates, where he was president, and the duke
marched out to meet Monsieur as far as Lunel.  "Troops were levied
throughout the province and the environs as openly as if it had been for
the king."  But the regiments were slow in forming; the Duke of Orleans
wished to gain over some of the towns; Narbonne and Montpellier closed
their gates.  The bishop's influence had been counted upon for making
sure of Nimes, and Montmorency everywhere tried to practise on the
Huguenots; "but the Reformed ministers of Nimes, having had advices by
letter from his Majesty, whereby he represented himself to have been
advertised that the principal design of Monsieur was to excite them of
the religion styled Reformed, considered themselves bound in their own
defence to do more than the rest for the king's service.  They assembled
the consistory, resolved to die in obedience to him, went to seek the
consuls and requested them to have the town-council assembled, in order
that it might be brought to take a similar resolution; which the consuls,
gained over by M. de Montmorency, refused."  [_Memoires de Richelieu,_
t. iii.  p. 160.]  Thereupon the ministers sent off in haste to Marshal
La Force, who had already taken position at Pont-Saint-Esprit with his
army; and, he having despatched some light horse on the 26th of July, the
people cried, "Hurrah! for the king!" the bishop was obliged to fly, and
the town was kept to its allegiance.  "Beaucaire, the governor of which
had been won over," made armed resistance.  "If we beat the king's army,"
said the Duke of Montmorency on returning to Pezenas after this incident,
"we shall have no lack of towns; if not, we shall have to go and make our
court at Brussels."

At the news of his brother's revolt, the king, who happened to be on the
frontiers of Lorraine, had put himself in motion, but he marched at his
ease and by short stages, "thinking that the fire Monsieur would kindle
would be only a straw fire."

He hurried his movements when he heard of Montmorency's uprising, and
left Paris after having put the seals upon the duke's house, who had
imprudently left five hundred and fifty thousand livres there; the money
was seized and lodged in the royal safe.  The Princess of Guemene,
between whom and Montmorency there were very strong ties, went to see the
cardinal, who was in attendance on the king.  "Sir," she said to him,
"you are going to Languedoc; remember the great marks of attachment that
M. de Montmorency showed you not long ago; you cannot forget then without
ingratitude."  Indeed, when the king believed himself to be dying at
Lyons, he had recommended the cardinal to the Duke of Montmorency, who
had promised to receive him into his government.  "Madam," replied
Richelieu coldly, "I have not been the first to break off."

Already the Parliament of Toulouse, remaining faithful to the king, had
annulled the resolutions of the Estates, the letters and commissions of
the governor; and the Parliament of Paris had just enregistered a
resolution against the servants and adherents of the Duke of Orleans, as
rebels guilty of high treason and disturbers of the common peace.  Six
weeks were granted the king's brother to put an end to all acts of
hostility; else the king was resolved to decree against him, after that
interval of delay, "whatsoever he should consider it his duty to do for
the preservation of his kingdom, according to the laws of the realm and
the example of his predecessors."

It was against Marshal Schomberg that Montmorency was advancing.  The
latter found himself isolated in his revolt, shut up within the limits of
his government, between the two armies of the king, who was marching in
person against him.  Calculations had been based upon an uprising of
several provinces and the adhesion of several governors, amongst others
of the aged Duke of Epernon, who had sent to Monsieur to say, "I am his
very humble servant; let him place himself in a position to be served;"
but no one moved, the king every day received fresh protestations of
fidelity, and the Duke of Epernon had repaired to Montauban to keep that
restless city to its duty, and to prevent any attempt from being made in
the province.

At three leagues' distance from Castelnaudary, Marshal Schomberg was
besieging a castle called St.  Felix-de-Carmain, which held out for the
Duke of Orleans.  Montmorency advanced to the aid of the place; he had
two thousand foot and three thousand horse; and the Duke of Orleans
accompanied him with a large number of gentlemen.  The marshal had won
over the defenders of St. Felix, and he was just half a league from
Castelnaudary when he encountered the rebel army.  The battle began
almost at once.  Count de Moret, natural son of Henry IV. and Jacqueline
de Bueil, fired the first shot.  Hearing the noise, Montmorency, who
commanded the right wing, takes a squadron of cavalry, and, "urged on by
that impetuosity which takes possession of all brave men at the like
juncture, he spurs his horse forward, leaps the ditch which was across
the road, rides over the musketeers, and, the mishap of finding himself
alone causing him to feel more indignation than fear, he makes up his
mind to signalize by his resistance a death which he cannot avoid."  Only
a few gentlemen had followed him, amongst others an old officer named
Count de Rieux, who had promised to die at his feet and he kept his word.
In vain had Montmorency called to him his men-at-arms and the regiment of
Ventadour; the rest of the cavalry did not budge.  Count de Moret had
been killed; terror was everywhere taking possession of the men.  The
duke was engaged with the king's light horse; he had just received two
bullets in his mouth.  His horse, "a small barb, extremely swift," came
down with him and he fell wounded in seventeen places, alone, without a
single squire to help him.  A sergeant of a company of the guards saw him
fall, and carried him into the road; some soldiers who were present burst
out crying; they seemed to be lamenting their general's rather than their
prisoner's misfortune.  Montmorency alone remained as if insensible to
the blows of adversity, and testified by the grandeur of his courage that
in him it had its seat in a place higher than the heart."  [_Journal du
Duc de Montmorency (Archives curieuses de l'Histoire de France),_ t. iv.]

[Illustration: Henry, Duke of Montmorency, at Castelnaudary----199]

Whilst the army of the Duke of Orleans was retiring, carrying off their
dead, nearly all of the highest rank, the king's men were bearing away
Montnmorency, mortally wounded, to Castelnaudary.  His wife, Mary Felicia
des Ursins, daughter of the Duke of Bracciano, being ill in bed at
Beziers, sent him a doctor, together with her equerry, to learn the truth
about her husband's condition.  "Thou'lt tell my wife," said the duke,
"the number and greatness of the wounds thou hast seen, and thou'lt
assure her that it which I have caused her spirit is incomparably more
painful, to me than all the others."  On passing through the faubourgs of
the town, the duke desired that his litter should be opened, "and the
serenity that shone through the pallor of his visage moved the feelings
of all present, and forced tears from the stoutest and the most stolid."
[_Journal du Due de Montmorency (Archives curieuses de l'Histoire de
France)_, t.  iv.]

The Duke of Orleans did not lack the courage of the soldier; he would
fain have rescued Montmorency and sought to rally his forces; but the
troops of Languedoc would obey none but the governor; the foreigners
mutinied, and the king's brother had no longer an army.  "Next day, when
it was too late," says Richelieu, "Monsieur sent a trumpeter to demand
battle of Marshal Schomberg, who replied that he would not give it, but
that, if he met him, he would try to defend himself against him."
Monsieur considered himself absolved from seeking the combat, and
henceforth busied himself about nothing but negotiation.  Alby, Beziers,
and Pezenas hastened to give in their submission.  It was necessary for
the Duchess of Montmorency, ill and in despair, to quicken her departure
from Beziers, where she was no longer safe.  "As she passed along the
streets she heard nothing but a confusion of voices amongst the people,
speaking insolently of those who would withdraw in apprehension."  The
king was already at Lyons.

He was at Pont-Saint-Esprit when he sent a message to his brother, from
whom he had already received emissaries on the road.  The first demands
of Gaston d'Orleans were still proud; he required the release of
Montmorency, the rehabilitation of all those who had served his party and
his mother's, places of surety and money.  The king took no notice; and
a second envoy from the prince was put in prison.  Meanwhile, the
superintendent of finance, M. de Bullion, had reached him from the king,
and "found the mind of Monsieur very penitent and well disposed, but not
that of all the rest, for Monsieur confessed that he had been ill-advised
to behave as he did at the cardinal's house, and afterwards leave the
court; acknowledging himself to be much obliged to the king for the
clemency he had shown to him in his proclamation, which had touched him
to the heart, and that he was bounden therefor to the cardinal, whom he
had always liked and esteemed, and believed that he also on his side
liked him."  [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. viii.  p. 196.]

The Duchess of Montmorency knew Monsieur, although she, it was said,
had pressed her husband to join him; and all ill as she was, had been
following him ever since the battle of Castelnaudary, in the fear lest he
should forget her husband in the treaty.  She could not, unfortunately,
enter Beziers, and it was there that the arrangements were concluded.
Monsieur protested his repentance, cursing in particular Father
Chanteloube, confessor and confidant of the queen his mother, "whom he
wished the king would have hanged; he had given pretty counsel to the
queen, causing her to leave the kingdom; for all the great hopes he had
led her to conceive, she was reduced to relieve her weariness by praying
to God."  [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. viii.  p. 196.]  As for Monsieur,
he was ready to give up all intelligence with Spain, Lorraine, and the
queen his mother, "who could negotiate her business herself."  He bound
himself to take no interest "in him or those who had connected themselves
with him on these occasions for their own purposes, and he would not
complain should the king make them suffer what they had deserved."  It is
true that he added to these base concessions many entreaties in favor of
M. de Montmorency; but M. de Bullion did not permit him to be under any
delusion.  "It is for your Highness to choose," he said, "whether or not
you prefer to cling to the interests of M. de Montmorency, displease the
king and lose his good graces."  The prince signed everything; then he
set out for Tours, which the king had assigned for his residence,
receiving on the way, from town to town, all the honors that would have
been paid to his Majesty himself.  M. de Montmorency remained in prison.

"He awaited death with a resignation which is inconceivable," says the
author of his _Memoires;_ "never did man speak more boldly than he about
it; it seemed as if he were recounting another's perils when he described
his own to his servants and his guards, who were the only witnesses of
such lofty manliness."  His sister, the Princess of Conde, had a memorial
prepared for his defence put before him.  He read it carefully, then he
tore it up, "having always determined," he said, "not to (chicaner) go
pettifogging for (or, dispute) his life."  "I ought by rights to answer
before the Parliament of Paris only," said he to the commission of the
Parliament of Toulouse instructed to conduct his trial, "but I give up
with all my heart this privilege and all others that might delay my
sentence."

There was not long to wait for the decree.  On arriving at Toulouse,
October 27, at noon, the duke had asked for a confessor.  "Father," said
he to the priest, "I pray you to put me this moment in the shortest and
most certain path to heaven that you can, having nothing more to hope or
wish for but God."  All his family had hurried up, but without being able
to obtain the favor of seeing the king.  "His Majesty had strengthened
himself in the resolution he had taken from the first to make in the case
of the said Sieur de Montmorency a just example for all the grandees of
his kingdom in the future, as the late king his father had done in the
person of Marshal Biron," says Richelieu in his Memoires.  The Princess
of Conde could not gain admittance to his Majesty, who lent no ear to
the supplications of his oldest servants, represented by the aged Duke of
Epernon, who accused himself by his own mouth of having but lately
committed the same crime as the Duke of Montmorency.  "You can retire,
duke," was all that Louis XIII. deigned to reply.  "I should not be a
king if I had the feelings of private persons," said he to Marshal
Chatillon, who pointed out to him the downcast looks and swollen eyes of
all his court.

It was the 30th of October, early: and the Duke of Montmorency was
sleeping peacefully.  His confessor came and awoke him.  "_Surgite,
eamus_ (rise, let us be going)," he said, as he awoke; and when his
surgeon would have dressed his wounds, "Now is the time to heal all my
wounds with a single one," he said, and he had himself dressed in the
clothes of white linen he had ordered to be made at Lectoure for the day
of execution.  When the last questions were put to him by the judges, he
answered by a complete confession; and when the decree was made known to
him, "I thank you, gentlemen," said he to the commissioners, "and I beg
you to tell all them of your body from me, that I hold this decree of the
king's justice for a decree of God's mercy."  He walked to the scaffold
with the same tranquillity, saluting right and left those whom he knew,
to take leave of them; then, having with difficulty placed himself upon
the block, so much did his wounds still cause him to suffer, he said out
loud, "_Domine Jesu, accipe spiritum meum (Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit)!_"  As his head fell, the people rushed forward to catch his
blood and dip their handkerchiefs in it.

Henry de Montmorency was the last of the ducal branch of his house, and
was only thirty-seven.

It was a fine opportunity for Monsieur to once more break his
engagements.  Shame and anxiety drove him equally.  He was universally
reproached with Montmorency's death; and he was by no means easy on the
subject of his marriage, of which no mention had been made in the
arrangements.  He quitted Tours and withdrew to Flanders, writing to the
king to complain of the duke's execution, saying that the life of the
latter had been the tacit condition of his agreement, and that, his
promise being thus not binding, he was about to seek a secure retreat out
of the kingdom.  "Everybody knows in what plight you were, brother, and
whether you could have done anything else," replied the king.

"What think you, gentlemen, was it that lost the Duke of Montmorency his
head?" said Cardinal Zapata to Bautru and Barrault, envoys of France,
whom he met in the antechamber of the King of Spain.  "His crimes,"
replied Bautru.  "No," said the cardinal, "but the clemency of his
Majesty's predecessors."  Louis XIII. and Cardinal Richelieu have
assuredly not merited that, reproach in history.

So many and such terrible examples were at last to win the all-powerful
minister some years of repose.  Once only, in 1636, a new plot on the
part of Monsieur and the Count of Soissons threatened not only his power,
but his life.  The king's headquarters were established at the castle of
Demuin; and the princes, urged on by Montresor and Saint-Ibal, had
resolved to compass the cardinal's death.  The blow was to be struck at
the exit from the council.  Richelieu conducted the king back to the
bottom of the staircase.

[Illustration: The King and the Cardinal----204]

The two gentlemen were awaiting the signal; but Monsieur did not budge,
and retired without saying a word.  The Count of Soissons dared not go
any further, and the cardinal mounted quietly to his own rooms, without
dreaming of the extreme peril he had run.  Richelieu was rather lofty
than proud, and too clear-sighted to mistake the king's feelings towards
him.  Never did he feel any confidence in his position; and never did he
depart from his jealous and sometimes petty watchfulness.  Any influence
foreign to his own disquieted him in proximity to a master whose affairs
he governed altogether, without ever having been able to get the mastery
over his melancholy and singular mind.

Women filled but a small space in the life of Louis XIII.  Twice,
however, in that interval of ten years which separated the plot of
Montmorency from that of Cinq-Mars, did the minister believe himself to
be threatened by feminine influence; and twice he used artifice to win
the monarch's heart and confidence from two young girls of his court,
Louise de La Fayette and Marie d'Hautefort.  Both were maids of honor to
the queen.  Mdlle. d'Hautefort was fourteen years old when, in 1630, at
Lyons, in the languors of convalescence, the king first remarked her
blooming and at the same time severe beauty, and her air of nobility and
modesty; and it was not long before the whole court knew that he had
remarked her, for his first care, at the sermon, was to send the young
maid of honor the velvet cushion on which he knelt for her to sit upon.
Mdlle. d'Hautefort declined it, and remained seated, like her companions,
on the ground; but henceforth the courtiers' eyes were riveted on her
movements, on the interminable conversations in which she was detained by
the king, on his jealousies, his tiffs, and his reconciliations.  After
their quarrels, the king would pass the greater part of the day in
writing out what he had said to Mdlle. d'Hautefort and what she had
replied to him.  At his death, his desk was found full of these singular
reports of the most innocent, but also most stormy and most troublesome
love-affair that ever was.  The king was especially jealous of Mdlle.
d'Hautefort's passionate devotion to the queen her mistress, Anne of
Austria.  "You love an ingrate," he said, "and you will see how she will
repay your services."  Richelieu had been unable to win Mdlle.
d'Hautefort; and he did his best to embitter the tiff which separated
her from the king in 1635.  But Louis XIII. had learned the charm of
confidence and intimacy; and he turned to Louise de La Fayette, a
charming girl of seventeen, who was as virtuous as Mdlle. d'Hautefort,
but more gentle and tender than she, and who gave her heart in all
guilelessness to that king so powerful, so a-weary, and so melancholy at
the very climax of his reign.  Happily for Richelieu, he had a means,
more certain than even Mdlle. d'Hautefort's pride, of separating her from
Louis XIII.; Mdlle.  de La Fayette, whilst quite a child, had serious
ideas of becoming a nun; and scruples about being false to her vocation
troubled her at court, and even in those conversations in which she
reproached herself with taking too much pleasure, Father Coussin, her
confessor, who was also the king's, sought to quiet her conscience; he
hoped much from the influence she could exercise over the king; but
Mdlle. de La Fayette, feeling herself troubled and perplexed, was urgent.
When the Jesuit reported to Louis XIII. the state of his fair young
friend's feelings, the king, with tears in his eyes, replied, "Though I
am very sorry she is going away, nevertheless I have no desire to be an
obstacle to her vocation; only let her wait until I have left for the
army."  She did not wait, however.  Their last interview took place at
the queen's, who had no liking for Mdlle. de La Fayette; and, as the
king's carriage went out of the court-yard, the young girl, leaning
against the window, turned to one of her companions and said, "Alas! I
shall never see him again!"  But she did see him again often for some
time.  He went to see her in her convent, and "remained so long glued to
her grating," says Madame de Motteville, that Cardinal Richelieu, falling
a prey to fresh terrors, recommenced his intrigues to tear him from her
entirely.  And he succeeded."  The king's affection for Mdlle.
d'Hautefort awoke again.  She had just rendered the queen an important
service.  Anne of Austria was secretly corresponding with her two
brothers, King Philip IV. and the Cardinal Infante, a correspondence
which might well make the king and his minister uneasy, since it was
carried on through Madame de Chevreuse, and there was war at the time
with Spain.  The queen employed for this intercourse a valet named
Laporte, who was arrested and thrown into prison.  The chancellor removed
to Val-de-Grace, whither the queen frequently retired; he questioned the
nuns and rummaged Anne of Austria's cell.  She was in mortal anxiety, not
knowing what Laporte might say or how to unloose his tongue, so as to
keep due pace with her own confessions to the king and the cardinal.
Mdlle. d'Hautefort disguised herself as a servant, went straight to the
Bastille, and got a letter delivered to Laporte, thanks to the agency of
Commander de Jars, her friend, then in prison.  The confessions of
mistress and agent being thus set in accord, the queen obtained her
pardon, but not without having to put up with reproaches and conditions
of stern supervision.  Madame de Chevreuse took fright, and went to seek
refuge in Spain.  The king's inclination towards Mdlle. d'Hautefort
revived, without her having an idea of turning it to profit on her own
account.  "She had so much loftiness of spirit that she could never have
brought herself to ask anything for herself and her family; and all that
could be wrung from her was to accept what the king and queen were
pleased to give her."

Richelieu had never forgotten Mdlle. d'Hautefort's airs: he feared her,
and accused her to the king of being concerned in Monsieur's continual
intrigues.  Louis XIII.'s growing affection for young Cinq-Mars, son of
Marshal d'Effiat, was beginning to occupy the gloomy monarch; and he the
more easily sacrificed Mdlle. d'Hautefort.  The cardinal merely asked him
to send her away for a fortnight.  She insisted upon hearing the order
from the king's own mouth.  "The fortnight will last all the rest of my
life," she said: "and so I take leave of your Majesty forever."  She went
accompanied by the regrets and tears of Anne of Austria, and leaving the
field open to the new favorite, the king's "rattle," as the cardinal
called him.

M. de Cinq-Mars was only nineteen when he was made master of the wardrobe
and grand equerry of France.  Brilliant and witty, he amused the king and
occupied the leisure which peace gave him.  The passion Louis XIII. felt
for his favorite was jealous and capricious.  He upbraided the young man
for his flights to Paris to see his friends and the elegant society of
the Marais, and sometimes also Mary di Gonzaga, daughter of the Duke of
Mantua, wooed but lately by the Duke of Orleans, and not indifferent, it
was said, to the vows of M. Le Grand, as Cinq-Mars was called.  The
complaints were detailed to Richelieu by the king himself in a strange
correspondence, which reminds one of the "reports" of his quarrels with
Mdlle. d'Hautefort.  "I am very sorry," wrote Louis XIII. on the 4th of
January, 1641, "to trouble you about the ill tempers of M. Le Grand.  I
upbraided him with his heedlessness; he answered that for that matter he
could not change, and that he should do no better than he had done.  I
said that, considering his obligations to me, he ought not to address me
in that manner.  He answered in his usual way: that he didn't want my
kindness, that he could do very well without it, and that he would be
quite as well content to be Cinq-Mars as M. Le Grand, but, as for
changing his ways and his life, he couldn't do it.  And so, he
continually knagging at me and I at him, we came as far as the
court-yard, when I said to him that, being in the temper he was in, he
would do me the pleasure of not coming to see me.  I have not seen him
since.  Signed, Louis."  This time the cardinal reconciled the king and
the favorite, whom he had himself placed near him, but whose constant
attendance upon the king his master he was beginning to find sometimes
very troublesome.  "One day he sent word to him not to be for the future
so continually at his heels, and treated him even to his face with so
much tartness and imperiousness as if he had been the lowest of his
valets."  Cinq-Mars began to lend an ear to those who were egging him on
against the cardinal.

Then began a series of negotiations and intrigues; the Duke of Orleans
had come back to Paris, the king was ill and the cardinal more so than
he; thence arose conjectures and insensate hopes; the Duke of Bouillon,
being sent for by the king, who confided to him the command of the army
of Italy, was at the same time drawn into the plot which was beginning to
be woven against the minister; the Duke of Orleans and the queen were in
it; and the town of Sedan, of which Bouillon was prince-sovereign, was
wanted to serve the authors of the conspiracy as an asylum in case of
reverse.  Sedan alone was not sufficient; there was need of an army.
Whence was it to come?  Thoughts naturally turned towards Spain.

For so perilous a treaty a negotiator was required, and the grand equerry
proposed his friend, Viscount de Fontrailles, a man of wit, who detested
the cardinal, and who would have considered it a simpler plan to
assassinate him; he consented, however, to take charge of the
negotiation, and he set out for Madrid, where his treaty was soon
concluded, in the name of the Duke of Orleans.  The Spaniards were to
furnish twelve thousand foot and five thousand horse, four hundred
thousand crowns down, twelve thousand crowns' pay a month, and three
hundred thousand livres to fortify the frontier-town which was promised
by the duke.  Sedan, Cinq-Mars, and the Duke of Bouillon were only
mentioned in a separate instrument.

The king was then at Narbonne, on his way to his army, which was
besieging Perpignan.  The grand equerry was with him.  Fontrailles went
to call upon him.  "I do not intend to be seen by anybody," said he, "but
to make speedily for England, as I do not think I am strong enough to
undergo the torture the cardinal might put me to in his own room on the
least suspicion."  On the 21st of April, the cardinal was dangerously
ill, and the king left him at Narbonne a prey to violent fever, with an
abscess on the arm which prevented him from writing, whilst Cinq-Mars,
ever present and ever at work, was doing his best to insinuate into his
master's mind suspicion of the minister, and the hopes founded upon his
disgrace or death.  The king listened, as he subsequently avowed, in
order to discover his favorite's wicked thoughts and make him tell all he
had in his heart.  "The king was tacitly the head of this conspiracy,"
says Madame de Motteville: "the grand equerry was the soul of it; the
name made use of was that of the Duke of Orleans, the king's only
brother; and their counsel was the Duke of Bouillon, who joined with them
because, having belonged to the party of M. de Soissons, he was in very
ill odor at court.  They all formed fine projects touching the change
that was to take place to the advantage of their aggrandizement and
fortunes, persuading themselves that the cardinal could not live above a
few days, during which he would not be able to set himself right with the
king."  Such were their projects and their hopes when the Gazette de
France, on the 21st of June, 1642, gave these two pieces of news both
together.  "The cardinal-duke, after remaining two days at Arles,
embarked on the 11th of this month for Tarascon, his health becoming
better and better.  The king has ordered under arrest Marquis de Cinq-
Mars, grand equerry of France."

Great was the surprise, and still greater was the dismay, amongst the
friends of Cinq-Mars.  "Your grand designs are as well known at Paris as
that the Seine flows under the Pont Neuf," wrote Mary di Gonzaga to him a
few days previously.

Those grand designs so imprudently divulged caused a presentiment of
great peril.  When left alone with his young favorite, and suddenly
overwhelmed, amidst his army, with cares and business of which his
minister usually relieved him, the king had too much wit not to perceive
the frivolous insignificance of Cinq-Mars compared with the mighty
capability of the cardinal.  "I love you more than ever," he wrote to
Richelieu: "we have been too long together to be ever separated, as I
wish everybody to understand.  In reply, the cardinal had sent him a copy
of the treaty between Cinq-Mars and Spain.

The king could not believe his eyes; and his wrath equalled his
astonishment.  Together with that of the grand equerry he ordered the
immediate arrest of M. de Thou, his intimate friend; and the order went
out to secure the Duke of Bouillon, then at the head of the army of
Italy.  He, caught, like Marshal Marillac, in the midst of his troops,
had vainly attempted to conceal himself; but he was taken and conducted
to the castle of Pignerol.  Fontrailles had seen the blow coming.  He
went to visit the grand equerry, and, "Sir," said he, "you are a fine
figure; if you were shorter by the whole head, you would not cease to be
very tall; as for me, who am already very short, nothing could be taken
off me without inconveniencing me and making me cut the poorest figure in
the world; you will be good enough, if you please, to let me get out of
the way of edged tools."  And he set out for Spain, whence he had hardly
returned.

What had become of the most guilty, if not the most dangerous, of all the
accomplices?  Monsieur, "the king's only (unique) brother," as Madame de
Motteville calls him, had come as far as Moulins, and had sent to ask the
grand equerry to appoint a place of meeting, when he heard of his
accomplice's arrest, and, before long, that of the Duke of Bouillon.
Frightened to death as he was, he saw that treachery was safer than
flight, and, just as the king had joined the all but dying cardinal at
Tarascon, there arrived an emissary from the Duke of Orleans bringing
letters from him.  He assured the king of his fidelity; he entreated
Chavigny, the minister's confidant, to give him "means of seeing his
Eminence before he saw the king, in which case all would go well."  He
appealed to the cardinal's generosity, begging him to keep his letter as
an eternal reproach, if he were not thenceforth the most faithful and
devoted of his friends.

Abbe de La Riviere, who was charged to implore pardon for his master,
was worthy of such a commission: he confessed everything, he signed
everything, though he "all but died of terror," and, at the cardinal's
demand, he soon brought all those poltrooneries written out in the Duke
of Orleans' own hand.  The prince was all but obliged to appear at the
trial and deliver up his accomplices in the face of the whole world.
The respect, however, of Chancellor Seguier for his rank spared him this
crowning disgrace.  The king's orders to his brother, after being
submitted to the cardinal, bore this note in the minister's hand:
"Monsieur will have in his place of exile twelve thousand crowns a month,
the same sum that the King of Spain had promised to give him."

"Paralysis of the arm did not prevent the head from acting;" the dying
cardinal had dictated to the king, stretched on a couch at his side, in a
chamber of his house at Monfrin, near Tarascon, those last commands which
completed the dishonor of the Duke of Orleans and the ruin of the
favorite.  Louis XIII. slowly took the road back to Fontainebleau in the
cardinal's litter, which the latter had lent him.  The prisoners were
left in the minister's keeping, who ordered them before long to Lyons,
whither he was himself removed.  The grand equerry coming from
Montpellier, M. de Thou from Tarascon, in a boat towed by that of the
cardinal, and the Duke of Bouillon from Pignerol, were all three lodged
in the castle of Pierre-Encise.  Their examination was put off until the
arrival of such magistrates "as should be capable of philosophizing and
perpetually thinking of the means they must use for arriving at their
ends."  That was useless, inasmuch as the grand equerry "never ceased to
say quite openly that he had done nothing to which the king had not
consented."

Louis XIII. was, no doubt, affected by such language; for, scarcely had
he arrived at Fontainebleau, whither he had been preceded by news of the
end of the queen his mother, who had died at Cologne in exile and
poverty, when he wrote to all the parliaments of his kingdom, to the
governors of the provinces, and to the ambassadors at foreign courts, to
give his own account of the arrest of the guilty and the part he himself
had played in the matter.  "The notable and visible change which had for
the last year appeared in the conduct of Sieur de Cinq-Mars, our grand
equerry, made us resolve, as soon as we perceived it, to carefully keep
watch on his actions and his words, in order to fathom them and discover
what could be the cause.  To this end, we resolved to let him act and
speak with us more freely than heretofore."  And in a letter written
straight to the chancellor, the king exclaims in wrath, "It is true that
having seen me sometimes dissatisfied with the cardinal, whether from the
apprehension I felt lest he should hinder me from going to the siege of
Perpignan, or induce me to leave it, for fear lest my health might
suffer, or from any other like reason, the said Sieur de Cinq-Mars left
nothing undone to chafe me against my said cousin, which I put up with so
long as his evil offices were confined within the bounds of moderation.
But when he went so far as to suggest to me that the cardinal must be got
rid of, and offered to carry it out himself, I conceived a horror of his
evil thoughts, and held them in detestation.  Although I have only to say
so for you to believe it, there is nobody who can deem but that it must
have been so; for, otherwise, what motive would he have had for joining
himself to Spain against me, if I had approved of what he desired?"

The trial was a foregone conclusion; the king and his brother made common
cause in order to overwhelm the accused, "an earnest of a peace which was
not such as God announced with good will to man on Christmas day," writes
Madame de Motteville, "but such as may exist at court and amongst
brothers of royal blood."

The cardinal did not think it necessary to wait for the sentence.  He had
arrived at his house at Lyons, in a sort of square chamber, covered with
red damask, and borne on the shoulders of eighteen guards; there,
stretched upon his couch, a table covered with papers beside him, he
worked and chatted with whomsoever of his servants he had been pleased to
have as his companion on the road.  It was in the same equipage that he
left Lyons to gain the Loire and return to Paris.  On his passage, it was
necessary to pull down lumps of wall and throw bridges over the fosses to
make way for this vast litter and the indomitable man that lay dying
within it.

It was on the 12th of September, 1642, that the accused appeared before
the commission; there were now but two of them; the Duke of Bouillon had
made his private arrangement with the cardinal, confessing everything,
and requesting "to have his life spared in order that he might employ it
to preserve to the Catholic church five little children whom his death
would leave to persons of the opposite religion."  In consideration of
this pardon, a demand was made upon him to give up Sedan to the king,
"though it were easy to gain possession of-it by investment."  The duke
consented to all, and he awaited in his dungeon at Pierre-Bncise the
execution of his accomplices who had no town to surrender.  Their death
was to be the signal of his liberation.

The two accused denied nothing.  M. de Thou merely maintained that he had
not been in any way mixed up with the conspiracy, proving that he had
blamed the treaty with Spain, and that his only crime was not having
revealed it.  "He believed me to be his friend, his one faithful friend,"
said he, speaking of Cinq-Mars, "and I had no mind to betray him."  The
grand equerry told in detail the story of the plot, his connection with
the Duke of Orleans, who had missed no opportunity of paying court to
him, the resolutions taken in concert with the Duke of Bouillon, and the
treaty concluded with Spain, "confessing that he had erred, and had no
hope but in the clemency of the king, and of the cardinal, whose
generosity would be so much the more shown in asking pardon for him as he
was the less bound to do so."  There was not long to wait for the decree;
the votes were unanimous against the grand equerry, a single one of the
judges pronouncing in favor of M. de Thou.  The latter turned towards
Cinq-Mars, and said, "Ah! well, sir; humanly speaking, I might complain
of you; you have placed me in the dock, and you are the cause of my
death; but God knows how I love you.  Let us die, sir, let us die
courageously, and win Paradise."

The decree against Cinq-Mars sentenced him to undergo the question in
order to get a more complete revelation of his accomplices.  "It had been
resolved not to put him to it," says Tallemant des Reaux: "but it was
exhibited to him nevertheless; it gave him a turn, but it did not make
him do anything to belie himself, and he was just taking off his doublet,
when he was told to raise his hand in sign of telling the truth."

The execution was not destined to be long deferred; the very day on which
the sentence was delivered saw the execution of it.  "The grand equerry
showed a never-changing and very resolute firmness to the death, together
with admirable calmness and the constancy and devoutness of a Christian,"
wrote M. du Marca, councillor of state, to the secretary of state
Brionne; and Tallemant des Reaux adds, "He died with astoundingly great
courage, and did not waste time in speechifying; he would not have his
eyes bandaged, and kept them open when the blow was struck."  M. de Thou
said not a word save to God, repeating the Credo even to the very
scaffold, with a fervor of devotion that touched all present.  "We have
seen," says a report of the time, "the favorite of the greatest and most
just of kings lose his head upon the scaffold at the age of twenty-two,
but with a firmness which has scarcely its parallel in our histories.  We
have seen a councillor of state die like a saint after a crime which men
cannot justly pardon.  There is nobody in the world who, knowing of their
conspiracy against the state, does not think them worthy of death, and
there will be few who, having knowledge of their rank and their fine
natural qualities, will not mourn their sad fate."

[Illustration: Cinq-Mars and De Thou going to Execution----215]

"Now that I make not a single step which does not lead me to death, I am
more capable than anybody else of estimating the value of the things of
the world," wrote Cinq-Mars to his mother, the wife of Marshal d'Effiat.
"Enough of this world; away to Paradise!" said M. de Thou, as he marched
to the scaffold.  Chalais and Montmorency had used the same language.  At
the last hour, and at the bottom of their hearts, the frivolous courtier
and the hare-brained conspirator, as well as the great soldier and the
grave magistrate, had recovered their faith in God.





CHAPTER XXXIX.----LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL RICHELIEU, AND THE PROVINCES.

The story has been told of the conspiracies at court and the repeated
checks suffered by the great lords in their attempts against Cardinal
Richelieu.  With the exception of Languedoc, under the influence of its
governor the Duke of Montmorency, the provinces took no part in these
enterprises; their opposition was of another sort; and it is amongst the
parliaments chiefly that we must look for it.

"The king's cabinet and his bed-time business (_petit coucher_) cause me
more embarrassment than the whole of Europe causes me," said the cardinal
in the days of the great storms at court; he would often have had less
trouble in managing the parliaments and the Parliament of Paris in
particular, if the latter had not felt itself supported by a party at
court.  For a long time past a pretension had been put forward by that
great body to give the king advice, and to replace towards him the
vanished states-general.  "We hold the place in council of the princes
and barons, who from time immemorial were near the person of the kings,"
was the language used, in 1615, in the representations of the Parliament,
which had dared, without the royal order, to summon the princes, dukes,
peers, and officers of the crown to deliberate upon what was to be done
for the service of the king, the good of the state, and the relief of the
people.

This pretension on the part of the parliaments was what Cardinal
Richelieu was continually fighting against.  He would not allow the
intervention of the magistrates in the government of the state.  When he
took the power into his hands, nine parliaments sat in France--Paris,
Toulouse, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Rouen, Aix, Rennes, and Pau: he
created but one, that of Metz, in 1633, to severe in a definitive manner
the bonds which still attached the three bishoprics to the Germanic
empire.  Trials at that time were carried in the last resort to Spires.

Throughout the history of France we find the Parliament of Paris bolder
and more enterprising than all the rest: and it did not belie its
character in the very teeth of Richelieu.  When, after _Dupes' Day_ was
over, Louis XIII. declared all the companions of his brother's escape
guilty of high treason, the Parliament of Dijon, to which the decree was
presented by the king himself, enregistered it without making any
difficulty.  All the other parliaments followed the example; that of
Paris alone resisted, and its decision on the 25th of April contained a
bitter censure upon the cardinal's administration.  On the 12th of May,
the decision of that Parliament was quashed by a decree of the royal
council, and all its members were summoned to the Louvre; on their knees
they had to hear the severe reprimand delivered by Chateauneuf, keeper of
the seals; and one president and three counsellors were at the same time
dismissed.  When the Parliament, still indomitable, would have had those
magistrates sit in defiance of the royal order, they were not to be found
in their houses; the soldiery had carried them off.

[Illustration: The Parliament of Paris reprimanded----217]

The trial of Marshal Marillac, before a commission, twice modified during
the course of proceedings, of the Parliament of Dijon, was the occasion
of a fresh reclamation on the part of the Parliament of Paris; and the
king's ill-humor against the magistrates burst forth on the occasion of a
commission constituted at the Arsenal to take cognizance of the crime of
coining.  The Parliament made some formal objections the king, who was at
that time at Metz with his troops, summoned President Seguier and several
counsellors.  He quashed the decree of the Parliament.  "You are only
constituted," said he, "to judge between Master Peter and Master John
(between John Doe and Richard Roe); if you go on as at present, I will
pare your nails so close that you'll be sorry for it."  Five counsellors
were interdicted, and had great trouble in obtaining authority to sit
again. So many and such frequent squabbles, whether about points of