While the King continued his slow progress into Brittany to assure himself of the loyalty of the province, he was actually enveloped in a cloud of conspiracy. Every night, according to Bassompierre, the Comte de Chalais visited Monsieur in his room, and for two or three hours talked and plotted treason: an easy adventure for the Master of the King’s Wardrobe, who had his lodging close to royalty. The plan was that Monsieur should leave the Court and fly either south-west or north-east; either to the Huguenots at La Rochelle, prepared to receive him by the influence of Madame de Chevreuse and Madame de Rohan, or to the Duc d’Épernon and his son at Metz. The Comte de Soissons, whom the King had left behind as governor of Paris, furious at the arrest of his friends the Vendôme princes, was eager not only to help with arms and men towards a civil war, but to seize his own advantage by carrying off Mademoiselle de Montpensier. This last detail of the plot, it seems, was the first to reach the King’s ears, and he defeated it by sending for the heiress and her mother, the Duchesse de Guise, who immediately followed the Court on its westward journey. This piece of ill-luck was swiftly followed by others. Monsieur himself was undecided, timid, difficult to move to instant action. Disliking the Huguenot leaders, he was unwilling to place himself in their hands. Metz was his favourite idea; but the Marquis de la Valette would not act independently of his father, and the old Duc d’Épernon, it seems, had had enough of quarrels with the King, for he went so far as to send him the letter that Monsieur had written. Richelieu seems to have felt a certain scornful pity for the unfortunate Chalais, whose evil report was brought to him by other spies. More than once he had him warned that he was on the road to ruin; yet “the poor gentleman” went on with his desperate schemes. And even the spies had not discovered the extent of these. Chalais was betrayed to his destruction by a friend, the Comte de Louvigny, who quarrelled with him because he would not take his side in some trivial dispute with the Comte de Candale, another son of the Duc d’Épernon. Chalais made it clear that neither he nor his friends could afford to be on ill terms with that family. This quarrel took place between Saumur and Nantes, as the Court travelled down the Loire in all the fresh beauty of early summer. M. de Bassompierre, who was present, a courtier of long experience, thought nothing of it--a mere matter of an _amourette_--and it is pretty certain that public opinion was with him in denouncing Louvigny as “ce méchant garçon” for the revenge he took. Having been known as “parfait ami de Chalais,” the confidant of his secrets, he straightway poured them all into the ears of the Cardinal and the King. Bassompierre hints that in his rage and spite he told even more than the truth; but that alone was enough to condemn Chalais.