Bassompierre went away reflecting how men uplifted by fortune are often inspired to foresee a coming fall; but also how seldom they have resolution enough to avoid it. If Concini was sincere in his wish to leave his dangerous eminence, this episode throws a tragic light on his conduct during the first three months of 1617. His insolent bravado at Court and elsewhere seems now the desperation of an adventurer fighting hopelessly for his life. It was hardly necessary for M. de Luynes to poison the King’s mind against the Maréchal d’Ancre; he did it himself. A day seldom passed without some new insult, some fresh mark of disrespect shown to Royalty. The Maréchal laughed at the boy, teased him, did not uncover in his presence. Standing with one or two attendants at a window in the Louvre, Louis looked down with proud and gloomy eyes on the Maréchal’s splendid suite as it pranced in the courtyard without a salute to spare for him. When the King wanted money--which frequently happened, for his mother did not indulge him in that way or any other--the Maréchal asked him, with an air of dashing liberality which deeply offended the boy, why he had not applied to him. Luynes was an ambitious man, of course; but any loyal servant of the King would have done well to be angry, and Concini, by refusing him one of his nieces in marriage, had made a personal enemy of him. While Louis, sad and bored from childhood, went his melancholy way, catching little birds, wheeling barrows of turf to make banks in the Tuileries gardens, his handsome falconer was always there, whispering a deeper discontent into ears by no means dull. The removal of Concini, his wife and his parasites, would mean the Queen-mother’s fall from the height of power she had usurped ever since the King was declared major, thus ending her regency. It would mean the submission of the rebel princes and nobles, who were even now declaring themselves, by secret letters and messages, faithful servants of the King. It would seat Louis XIII. on his father’s throne. There was only one way. Louis was at first unwilling that the Maréchal should be killed. He discussed other plans with Luynes and two or three confidants. He might escape from Paris to Amboise, where a brother of Luynes was in command and where his friends might gather round him; or he might join the princes, taking the command of their forces, which would thus become his own. These ideas reached the Queen-mother, and his guards were changed for others whom she could trust. Escape was made impossible, and from that time Concini was doomed. Luynes and his fellows, with the King’s full consent, plotted the affair with M. de Vitry, captain of the guard, a bold, resolute man. On the morning of Monday, April 24, this officer with a few companions met Concini at the entrance of the Louvre on his way to pay his daily visit to the Queen. “Sir,” said Vitry, “I arrest you, by order of the King.”