It was a dangerous game to play for long with a person so vigilant and penetrating as Richelieu. The reports which daily reached the Cardinal from his secret agents all tended to show that _Monsieur_ had grossly violated the solemn pledge that he had given at Fontainebleau, and that want of courage alone prevented him from throwing aside the mask; and he found it difficult to reconcile Chalais’s assurances of devotion to himself with those midnight visits _en robe de chambre_ lasting two or three hours which his spies informed him the count was in the habit of paying to Gaston’s apartments. Already he was more than half-convinced that the young man was playing him false, when an act of shameful treachery settled the question. On June 27 the Court left Blois for Tours, from which town Chalais despatched La Loubère to Metz. “This La Loubère,” writes Bassompierre, “came to take leave of the Comte de Louvigny,[37] in whose service he had been, and, knowing him to be an intimate friend of Chalais, did not hesitate to tell him where he was going and with what object. From Tours the King journeyed along the River Loire to Saumur, and on the way Louvigny had some dispute with M. de Candale,[38] with whom he was not on good terms, owing to some _amourettes_.[39] However, this passed without any disturbance. On the evening we arrived at Saumur, Chalais and Bouteville[40] came to dine with me, and begged me to reprimand Louvigny, which I did in their presence; and the others told him that he must take care not to have any quarrel with M. de Candale, if he did not wish to lose their friendship, because they were bound to M. de Candale by particular obligations. He, on the contrary, while going on the morrow from Saumur to the Ponts-de-Cé, picked a quarrel with M. de Candale, and then all those whom he thought his friends left him to offer their services to M. de Candale. At which this malicious lad was so enraged, that on the morrow, when the King arrived at Ancenis,[41] he requested to speak to him, and informed him that La Loubère had gone to Metz by order of Chalais, and of several other things which he knew or which he invented.”[42] Other writers assert that the real cause of Louvigny’s treachery was that he had, like Chalais, fallen violently in love with Madame de Chevreuse and was jealous of the preference which that lady showed for the Master of the Wardrobe; and it is therefore possible that the affair of which Bassompierre speaks was only a pretext. Anyway, a few days later Chalais was arrested at Nantes, where the Court had arrived on July 3, and imprisoned in a gloomy dungeon in the basement of one of the towers of the château.