Monsieur left Paris immediately for Orléans, where he swaggered for some weeks and tried to rouse a civil war by posing as a friend to the populace and a resister of taxation. Since he refused to submit to his brother and to return to Court, Richelieu was prepared to bring him to his senses by armed force. But he preferred self-banishment. In the middle of March he rode across country to Besançon, and then took refuge with the Duke of Lorraine. He was followed into exile by a number of persons of quality, notably his half-brother the Comte de Moret, the Duc d’Elbeuf, brother-in-law of the Duc de Vendôme, the Duc de Bellegarde, governor of Burgundy, and M. and Madame du Fargis, in disgrace at Court because of their intimate friendship with the brothers Marillac. Each day of that winter and spring brought fresh and painful experience to Marie de Médicis. She saw herself checked in every direction by an enemy who worked with extraordinary prudence, keeping all the outward forms of due respect while he lured her gradually to ruin. No doubt her presence in Paris, her atmosphere of plot and intrigue, was dangerous to him, if not to the State. The question was, how to remove her from the centre of things without a public scandal. In February the Court went to Compiègne for hunting, and to spend the Carnival. As Richelieu had foreseen, the Queen-mother was not deterred by “the incommodity of the season” from following the King: she would not repeat her mistake of St. Martin’s Day. At Compiègne the King made a last unsuccessful attempt to soften her heart towards the Cardinal. As she firmly refused to listen to any arguments, it was decided that she must be separated from a Court in which her presence was a centre for the factious and the ill-intentioned. The Château of Compiègne was roused early on the morning of February 23. The King had announced that he would go hunting at dawn; and in fact he and the Cardinal, with a large attendance, rode out of the gates before either of the Queens was awake. Instead of turning into the dim glades of the forest, the royal party rode hard for Paris.