The two were beheaded in the Place de Grève on June 21, 1627. Their deaths, following on his signal triumphs of the preceding year, made the name of Richelieu hateful and terrible to the nobles of France. They began to feel that he might be as almighty in power as he was relentless in action. But they did not cease to fight duels. Another tragic event in the early summer of that year was the death of Monsieur’s young wife, a few days after the birth of her child--not the prince whose arrival had been anxiously expected all the winter, the suspense adding pride and importance to Monsieur and Madame, gloom and jealousy to the King and Queen--but a princess, afterwards known as the Grande Mademoiselle, the greatest heiress in Europe, whose distinguished, eccentric presence was to be familiar to the French Court for more than sixty years. “That death,” says Bassompierre, “changed the face of the Court, gave rise to new designs, and in short was the cause of many evils which have since come to pass.” The Duchess had no more sincere mourner than Cardinal de Richelieu. “Deplorable ... prejudicial to the welfare of the State,” he writes of the death of Madame, “... who in ten months was wife of a great prince, sister-in-law of the three first and greatest kings of Christendom, a mother, and a corpse.” The Cardinal had good reasons for his regret. Monsieur, who since his marriage had lived peaceably, content with his own trifling amusements, influenced by his wife’s gentle attraction rather than by a set of ambitious favourites, now became once more a centre of varied intrigue. And it was not only his ready disloyalty, but the constant scandal of his private life, which induced Louis XIII. and Richelieu to do their best to satisfy his restless spirit. The foolish and vicious boy, a widower at nineteen, was after all the only hope of the direct royal line. By way of consoling the Prince and occupying his mind, “the King,” says a memoir-writer of that century, “proposed to him all kinds of honest exercise, principally that of the chase: there being hardly a day on which His Majesty did not so divert himself, he imagined that Monsieur would take the same pleasure in it”--which he did not, being a Parisian and a gambler. “And since Monsieur possessed no house near Paris where he could sometimes take the air, His Majesty thought well to give him that of Limours, belonging to the Cardinal de Richelieu; thus gratifying His Highness in the belief that he would take pleasure in beautifying it. It was purchased at the same price for which it had been acquired, which amounted to 400,000 _livres_, including the domain of Montlhéry; and with a further payment of 300,000 _livres_ to the Cardinal de Richelieu, as well for the furniture as for his expenditure and the improvements he had made.” The writer goes on to explain that the Cardinal gladly seized this opportunity of getting rid of Limours.