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