“The Cardinal hated Monsieur,” says a writer of the time, and we can well believe it--with the scornful hatred of a proud and brilliant man bearing the whole burden of the State on his shoulders, and finding himself constantly thwarted and threatened by an insolent, privileged boy. He hated him more because of the reconciliations he had to arrange, the flatteries he had to use, the fatherly yet respectful manner in which the King’s brother must be treated by the King’s First Minister--conscious, for the next dozen years, that his sickly master might die childless and be succeeded by this young fellow whose will and power for mischief were only balanced by his weakness of character. Until the birth of a Dauphin, in 1638, destroyed Gaston’s political importance, he was to be the chief obstacle in Richelieu’s career, the chief thorn in his side. The arrest of the Maréchal d’Ornano had all the effect that Richelieu intended; but if it warned and terrified the more prudent conspirators, it infuriated the bolder, younger spirits of Monsieur’s faction. Madame de Chevreuse and a few young men, led by the Grand Prieur de Vendôme and Henry de Talleyrand-Périgord, Comte de Chalais, decided that Richelieu must die. They planned that Monsieur should invite himself and a party of his friends to dine with the Cardinal at Fleury, his country-house near Fontainebleau. This gracious act might be supposed to mean that the Prince forgave his friend’s arrest. But the real intention was that the Cardinal’s guests should murder him. In the confusion that would follow, Monsieur’s party meant to do as they pleased with the King and the government. Richelieu was saved by the weakness of one of the chief conspirators. The Comte de Chalais, Keeper of the King’s Wardrobe, a young man of twenty-eight, was at this time the favoured lover of Madame de Chevreuse. He would have killed a dozen cardinals to please her, and he was ready to stab her enemy with his own hand. For all that, he ruined the enterprise. On the eve of the great day he confided the plan to Commander de Valençay, a loyal courtier, though a friend of his own. M. de Bassompierre may tell the story, for he was at Fontainebleau at the time.