Richelieu has been accused of deceiving the Grand Prior with false hopes of favour and clemency, thus encouraging him to place his brother and himself in the King’s hands. He might have thought himself justified in doing so, if necessary. On the contrary, if he is to be believed, he tried to guard against any accusation of the kind. He pretended to be aware neither of the anxious terror that had brought the young man to Limours, nor of the “fausse hardiesse” which led him to play this game of bluff for himself and for his brother, acting innocence and a frank readiness to face the King. “When the Grand Prior told the Cardinal that he was going to fetch his brother, he did not answer him that he was doing either well or ill, because he saw that they could not save themselves, or resist the King’s power, if they remained in Brittany, and he thought it better that His Majesty should take the trouble to fetch them thence, or even take them on their road, than give them a pretext to say” (what they did say) “that they had been attracted by fine words, deceived and caught by false hopes.” Finding that the Cardinal would give him no clear lead, Alexandre de Vendôme hastened on his way. A few days later, he and his brother, “making a virtue of necessity,” met the King at Blois. The next day, both were arrested and conveyed to the castle of Amboise, from which they were transferred to Vincennes. The Duc de Vendôme’s question--“What about Monsieur? Has he been arrested or no?”--was hardly needed to warn Richelieu, who arrived at Blois that same evening, that the conspiracy was still alive and dangerous. The Comte de Chalais, unimaginably rash and foolish, was playing a game he could only lose. His escape after the Fleury affair had been narrow enough, and he had then solemnly promised loyalty to the Cardinal, even undertaking to act as his spy, informing him of any evil counsels that might reach Monsieur. But Chalais was not his own master. Madame de Chevreuse drove him into a path where there was no more turning back, and after the arrest of the Vendôme princes he became the active agent and cat’s-paw of a new combination of old rebel forces which swiftly dragged Monsieur into its centre, his vows of loyalty hardly spoken and the ink of his signature not yet dry.