The affair was growing to the dimensions of a conspiracy against the crown as well as the minister. Viscount de Fontrailles, a man who detested the cardinal, and would not have hesitated to murder him as a simpler way of disposing of the difficulty, was named by Cinq-Mars as a proper person to deal with the Spaniards. He set out for Madrid, and soon succeeded in negotiating a secret treaty, in the name of the Duke of Orleans, by whose terms Spain was to furnish the conspirators with twelve thousand foot, five thousand horse, and the necessary funds for the enterprise. The town of Sedan, and the names of Cinq-Mars and Bouillon, were not mentioned in this treaty, but were given in a separate document. While this dangerous work was going on the cardinal was dangerously ill, a prey to violent fever, and with an abscess on his arm which prevented him from writing. The king was with the army, which was besieging Perpignan. With him was Cinq-Mars, who was doing his best to insinuate suspicions of the minister into the mind of the king. All seemed promising for the conspirators, the illness of the cardinal, in their opinion, being likely to carry him off in no long period, and meanwhile preventing him from discovering the plot and setting himself right with the king. Evidently these hopeful people did not know the resources of Cardinal Richelieu. In all his severe illness his eyes had not been blind, his intellect not at rest. Keen as they thought themselves, they had a man with double their resources to deal with. Though Richelieu was by no means surrounded by the intricate web of spies and intrigues with which fiction and the drama have credited him, he was not without his secret agents, and his means of tracing the most hidden movements of his enemies. Cinq-Mars lacked the caution necessary for a conspirator. His purposes became evident to the king, who had no thought of exchanging his great minister for a frivolous boy who was only fitted to amuse his hours of relaxation. The outcome of the affair appears in a piece of news published in the _Gazette de France_ on June 21, 1642. "The cardinal-duke," it said, "after remaining two days at Arles, embarked on the 11th of this month for Tarascon, his health becoming better and better. The king has ordered under arrest Marquis de Cinq-Mars, grand equerry of France."