The explanation of this singular conduct on the part of the besieged was not long in coming. That evening, Bassompierre, with Auvergne and Rohan, were supping with the Président Chevret, of the Chambre des Comptes, who had come to visit the army in connection with some legal business, when one of the president’s clerks arrived in all haste from Paris and whispered something to his master, who appeared very astonished. Then Chevret turned and spoke in a low voice to Auvergne, who sat next him, and Bassompierre remarked that the prince seemed no less astonished than the president. He begged them to let him know what news they had received, upon which they told him that, at eleven o’clock that morning, the Maréchal d’Ancre had been killed by the Marquis de Vitry, one of the captains of the Guards, and that it had been done by the King’s orders! Then Bassompierre remembered that when, a few hours before, he and La Rochefoucauld were standing on the edge of the moat of Soissons, one of the garrison had shouted to them: “Your master is dead, and ours has killed him!”--words to which he had attached no importance at the time--and marvelled that the enemy should have received so much earlier information of the event than the Royal army. But let us see what had been happening in Paris since Bassompierre’s departure for the army in the middle of March, which had culminated in the tragedy of that morning. * * * * * We have related, in the last chapter, how Marie de’ Medici and Concini had begun to grow suspicious of the influence that Louis XIII’s favourite, Luynes, had acquired over the mind of the young King, and how a rumour had spread that he was about to be banished from the Court. No action, however, had been taken against him; nevertheless, Luynes felt quite certain that his disgrace was only a question of time, and he resolved to anticipate his enemies. Clever and crafty, greedy and ambitious, and entirely without scruple, this Provençal was a dangerous man, and, while seeking by a show of subservience to the Queen-Mother and the marshal to disarm the suspicions they had formed of him and so secure a respite to enable him to execute his projects, he worked unceasingly to embitter the young King’s mind against them. He succeeded so well that at length Louis was fully persuaded that his crown and even his life were in peril, and that his mother and Concini contemplated setting his younger brother on the throne, in order to have a new minority to exploit.