The Cardinal’s devoted friend, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, acted as surveyor of the works at Richelieu, and in a letter to him in June 1632, between the execution of Marillac and Monsieur’s invasion of Languedoc, we have evidence of the way in which every exterior and interior detail was thought out by an unresting brain. The painting of the rooms was now in full swing, being mostly designed by Simon Vouet, the King’s favourite painter, and carried out by him and other artists. After giving orders as to the decoration of a large room above the entrance, the Cardinal proceeds: “The vaulted cabinet at the side should be painted in _grisaille_ on the stone vaulting, partly by the painter from Lyons, and partly by other painters, who will enrich the _grisaille_ with gold. M. de Bordeaux, being on the spot, will make them agree together as to what each shall do. In this cabinet there must be a wainscot six feet high with a recess to hold rarities, and the said wainscot shall be painted in _grisaille_ of one tint and gilded to match the vaulting. M. Vouet can very well design the paintings.” Architectural details regarding the level of different rooms, their respective heights, their flat or vaulted ceilings, fill a good part of the letter. Everywhere there are six-foot wainscotings with shelves or recesses for “rarities”; for His Eminence’s collection of _objets d’art_ was already famous in Europe. Then he goes on to the gardens. “My uncle tells me that the canal at Richelieu is full of weeds. At the end of the summer, when the lawns are levelled and the masons are no longer working on the banks of the said canal, it must be entirely drained and all the weeds must be rooted up and burnt in its bed; and when it is clean and dry let it be filled again, and put a boat on it, and make a bargain with a strong and vigorous man who has nothing else to do, that he will not suffer a weed in it but will tear them up as they grow, which may be done with tools of iron made for the purpose. In that country it suffices a man if he have enough to live on, so that I think a hundred francs or forty crowns will acquit me.” With quite as eager an interest, both now and again later, even when Monsieur is “drawing towards Languedoc” and political storms are darkening all the horizon, he writes of pictures from Mantua that he is sending to Richelieu, of the preservation, with new floors and beams, of his father’s old rooms--a fancy which, in Mademoiselle de Montpensier’s opinion, spoiled the grandeur of the house--of building a park wall; and last, not least, of the new town and the houses that his friends are building there. A little hurry, he thinks, would not be out of place, for he is bent on making Richelieu, his own town, a centre of trade, of justice, of enlightenment, to all the western country.