The two Queens and all the Court were loud in their expressions of grief; but this did not prevent them from making their arrangements for the morrow of the catastrophe which appeared so imminent, and, though we may discredit the story that Anne of Austria instructed her _dame d’atours_, the Comtesse du Fargis, to write to _Monsieur_ reminding him of the project, more than once mooted, of a marriage between them in the event of the King’s death, there can be no doubt that the Queen-Mother was preparing to revenge herself upon “her ungrateful servant,” so soon as his protector should have drawn his last breath. As for Richelieu, his state of mind may be imagined. He saw his power crumbling away, his liberty, and perhaps even his life, threatened, and, what he valued more than life, his work, on the point of being undone, and France stepping back into the chaos at home and impotence abroad from which he had extricated her. “I know not,” he wrote to Schomberg, “whether I am dead or alive.” But, before the day was over, the sick monarch, to the astonishment of all, and the mortification, it is to be feared, of not a few, took a turn for the better, and on the morrow was out of danger. “By the grace of God,” wrote the Cardinal to d’Effiat, “the King is out of danger, but, to tell you the truth, I know not whether I am. I pray God that He sends me death in His mercy sooner than the occasion of relapsing into the state in which we have been.” On learning that the King was ill and that his illness was “not without danger,” Bassompierre returned in all haste to Lyons, where he arrived on October 1, the day after the crisis. After paying his respects to the King, he went to salute the two Queens, the Princesses of the Blood, and the Cardinal, and then proceeded to the house of a M. d’Alaincourt, an old friend of his, with whom he always stayed when at Lyons. Richelieu had received Bassompierre very cordially and had “spoken to him in great confidence.” But next day his manner changed and became cold and distant. The marshal sought out Châteauneuf, who, until he was so unfortunate as to succumb to the _beaux yeux_ of Madame de Chevreuse, was one of the most faithful of the cardinal’s henchmen, and inquired what he could possibly have done to offend his Eminence. Upon which Châteauneuf told him that the Cardinal had been informed that Bassompierre had “brought certain messages on behalf of _Monsieur_ to the Queen-Mother, with a power to arrest him [Richelieu] if harm came to the King.” Bassompierre answered that “he dared swear that _Monsieur_ never had such an idea, because when he [Bassompierre] left Paris, he was doubtful whether the King was in danger.”