Gibbets had been planted here and there in the city by Concini’s orders, “to frighten those who dared speak ill of him.” To cut the horrible story short, they hanged his dead body on one of these and then tore it to pieces with the savagery of wild beasts, burning part and throwing part into the river. Richelieu was an eye-witness of these horrors. He was on his way to visit the Pope’s Nuncio, and his coach drove on to the bridge, a favourite thoroughfare, to find it a mass of people absorbed in their dreadful work and “so drunk with fury that there was no means of getting them to make way for the passage of coaches.” The Bishop’s coachman was indiscreet enough to take matters with the usual high hand and to attempt to force his way. One of the men who was roughly hustled made a loud complaint. “At that instant,” Richelieu writes, “I saw my peril, in case any one should cry out that I was a partisan of the Maréchal d’Ancre. To save myself, after violently threatening my coachman, I asked them what they were doing, and when they had answered me according to their fury against the Maréchal, I said to them, ‘You are men who would die to serve the King: shout, all of you, _Vive le Roi!_’ I led them off, and thus I gained free passage, and I took good care not to return the same way; I recrossed by the Pont Notre Dame.” A few days later, after a painful interview with her son--at which her stony calm broke down and she wept bitterly--and after formal farewells from court and city, Marie de Médicis quitted Paris for an honourable captivity at the Château de Blois. Her younger children took leave of her at the gate of the city. She was accompanied by a train of faithful servants, French and Italian, among whom the most distinguished was the Bishop of Luçon; it was largely owing to his influence with Luynes that the Queen had not been treated with greater severity. Two months later, after an unfair and absurd trial, the Maréchale d’Ancre was beheaded in the Place de Grève and her remains burnt to ashes. Most of the money, property, and possessions which she and her husband had accumulated during their years of power was bestowed upon the King’s friend and favourite, now Duc de Luynes and Lieutenant-General of Normandy. For his own not very considerable share in the ruin and death of Concini and his wife, Louis XIII. was rewarded by the French people with the title of “Le Juste.” CHAPTER VII 1617-1619 Richelieu at Blois--He is ordered back to his diocese--He writes a book in defence of the faith--Marriage of Mademoiselle de Richelieu--The Bishop exiled to Avignon--Escape of the Queen-mother from Blois--Richelieu is recalled to her service.