After Condé’s return to Paris, the management of affairs fell almost entirely into his hands, and his hôtel was besieged at all hours by petitioners and sycophants. “Almost all the grandees,” says Bassompierre, “were of his party and his cabal, and even MM. de Guise[104] joined him, under pretext of dissatisfaction with the Maréchal d’Ancre and his wife.” At the beginning of August, Concini returned to his [Illustration: CONCINO CONCINI, MARÉCHAL D’ANCRE. From an engraving by Aubert.] house in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, emboldened apparently by a promise of his protection which Condé had given him. A few days later, having some business with the prince, he had the hardihood to go to the Hôtel de Condé, attended by a suite of thirty gentlemen, at a time when Condé was giving a sumptuous fête in honour of Lord Hay, the British Ambassador Extraordinary, to which all the princes and great nobles had been invited. The company were at table when he arrived, but he went into the banquet-hall, in which he found Bouillon, Mayenne and other sworn enemies of his, spoke with Condé for some time, and then took his departure, “all these gentlemen glaring at him and he at them.” Next morning, the prince sent for Concini and told him that he had had great difficulty on the previous day in restraining his friends from falling upon him and killing him as he was leaving his hôtel, and that they all threatened to abandon him if he did not withdraw his protection from the marshal. In consequence, he was unable to protect him any longer, and he counselled him strongly to retire to Normandy, of which province he had recently been appointed lieutenant-general, in exchange for the surrender of a similar office in Picardy. Concini followed the prince’s advice--or rather his orders--went to the Louvre to take leave of the King and the Queen-Mother, and left Paris the next day (August 15). “It is impossible to say,” adds Bassompierre, “how much his departure discredited the Queen-Mother, when it was seen that a servant of hers could not live in safety in Paris, save so long as _Monsieur le Prince_ pleased; while it augmented the reputation and authority of _Monsieur le Prince_.”