all and individually of the women of the household, who were summoned to attend for the purpose. So much for Monseigneur’s little amusement: it was Ninon who was the sufferer. The insulted abbé complained to his Superior, who complained to the magistrate of the district, and from mouth to mouth the story flew. Not one man in black, but constant contingents of the black-soutaned fraternity haunted the rue des Tournelles, and invaded Ninon’s apartments, subjecting her to such severe inquisition about her affairs generally, that it became unendurable, and she wrote to the prince in severe reproach for allowing the blame of his folly to burden and annoy her. Whereupon Gaston sent two of his friends to mollify the wrath of the magistrate, who tore up the Jesuit Superior’s letter of complaint. But the scandal only aggravated the soreness and complications of the opposing parties of the Court, and it made an additional grievance for Richelieu against Gaston; though, on the other hand, it was Boisrobert, his own secretary, who was also his own jester-in-chief, who had been at the bottom of the offence, so that the affair cut both ways, and the cardinal may have preferred to see it hushed up. It was about this time that Richelieu lost by death the man he called his right hand—Père Joseph, the Capucin friar—in other words, “The Grey Cardinal,” as he was nicknamed; but in fact and deed the poor man never even received the bishopric long promised, never bestowed. Richelieu himself was already in failing health, worn by stress and anxiety for the care of the vast structure of kingly power he had built up and sustained, as it were, by his own hand, that was against so many, and Louis himself was almost as much a nonentity as any of the _rois fainéants_ of old days. It is almost impossible to realise that he and his false-hearted, selfish brother should have been the sons of the dauntless Henry of Navarre.