But it seemed to the Queen that Gaston’s proposed marriage made her position hopeless. If he had children, heirs to the crown, his wife would certainly be regarded as the first woman in France, and the prospect filled Anne with jealous misery. Personally, of course, she could do little in opposition, and the extent of her share in the great conspiracy was much exaggerated by scandalous tongues and pens. But Madame de Chevreuse threw herself into her mistress’s cause with all the more energy because she hated both Richelieu and the King. The Maréchal d’Ornano’s discontent found a hearty ally in her, loveliest and most daring of _intrigantes_, and also in the Princesse de Condé, who had her own reasons for disliking the Montpensier marriage. That younger branch of the Bourbons would thus be exalted above the branch of Bourbon-Condé, now next in succession to the crown. If Monsieur must marry--a troublesome necessity--the Condés wished for a match between him and their daughter Anne-Geneviève, now seven years old. The delay would please the Queen; in the meantime the Prince de Condé was ready to back Maréchal d’Ornano in demanding honours and appanages for Monsieur and even a share in the government. The alternative to the Condé marriage was one with a foreign princess; in either case the young prince would be independent of his brother, his mother and Cardinal de Richelieu. He was as popular, lively and good-natured as the King was unsociable and forbidding; and under the circumstances such a “cabale,” as Richelieu calls it, was likely to spread far. The Cardinal saw his danger. The greater among the conspirators were rather scornful of caution and secrecy. If Richelieu’s knowledge of their objects was at first vague, hardly a rebel name escaped him. From the Prince de Condé, still holding aloof from the Court, and the young Comte de Soissons, who intended himself to marry Mademoiselle de Montpensier, to César, Duc de Vendôme, governor of Brittany, who was prepared to make his province the head-quarters of an insurrection, and his brother Alexandre, the Grand Prior, with many others of less high descent but yet among _les grands_--Richelieu knew them all. Behind them loomed shadows of foreign Powers: the Dutch, indignant at the coldness of their ally and at her treaty with Spain; the English, “from faithlessness alone”; the Spaniards, from natural enmity and interested ambition; the Duke of Savoy, to avenge his wounded pride; and then, of course, the Huguenot party in France--past experience teaching them, Richelieu says bitterly, that they always profited by the troubles of the State.