The story goes that a tragic event made François lord of Richelieu. There was a feud, centuries old, between the Du Plessis in their moated castle and the family of Mausson, perched upon the hill. The quarrel had been in abeyance during the peaceable, absentee life of Louis du Plessis, but when his proud widow, with her haughty, passionate boys, took up her abode at Richelieu, it broke out again furiously. Louis, the eldest son, was just growing into manhood, an officer in the Duc de Montpensier’s guards, when he fell out with the Sieur de Mausson over that ancient bone of contention, a seat in church. Both families attended the village church of Braye, on the forest slope close by. In those days, and long afterwards, the chief gentleman in the parish had rights over the church quite as jealously guarded as any other of his feudal privileges. He sat with his family high up in the choir. He ordered the hour of mass, and the curé did not venture to begin before he arrived. The congregation followed his lead throughout. When he was absent, his servants sat in his place and insolently demanded the honours due to him. His coat of arms was hung up for all to see. If he died, the bells chimed unceasingly for forty days, and the church was hung with black velvet for a year and a day. It appears that the Sieur de Mausson and the young Seigneur de Richelieu both demanded honours which could not be paid to both. The young man, pushed on by his mother, made an angry resistance to the Mausson claims. His neighbour, by way of settling the question, lay in wait for Louis and murdered him. Madame de Richelieu thought of nothing but revenge. Her younger son, François, was page to King Charles IX.: she sent for him, and he lived at Richelieu, mother and son with one object, one intention, till the watched-for time came. Then one day, when Mausson was fording the river, François and his men rushed out from the shadow of the willows. They had set a cunning trap for the enemy, a cart-wheel hidden under water, and while his restive horse was plunging, they fell upon him and killed him. So ended the feud between Mausson and Richelieu, still a lingering tradition in the valley of the Mable. There was not much justice in those days, but it appears that François was obliged to fly the country. He wandered as far as Poland, where Henry of Anjou was playing at being King, and shared in the adventures of that most worthless of the Valois when he ran away with the Polish crown jewels and travelled round by Austria and Venice to succeed Charles IX on the throne of France.