Gaston remonstrated strongly against being deprived of his friend and preceptor; but his remonstrances would probably have been of little avail, had not la Vieville been precipitated from power. Ornano was then released by the king, and was placed at the head of the prince’s household. In 1626, at the request of Gaston, seconded by the advice of Richelieu, he was created marshal of France. This promotion was the precursor of his fall. It was a part of the policy of Richelieu to grant, in the first instance, more to suitors of rank than they were entitled to expect, that, in case of their afterwards opposing him, he might treat them without mercy. It appears he soon began to suspect that the new-made marshal was not likely to be a submissive dependent, and this was enough to induce him to work his ruin. Ornano himself aided his dangerous enemy, by pertinaciously requiring admittance into the council, and by using offensive language on his demand being refused. Various acts of the marshal were now represented in the darkest colours to the suspicious king, by Richelieu; and Louis, always open to suggestions of this kind, imprisoned the supposed offender in the castle of Vincennes. Ornano died there, in September, 1626. He death was attributed to poison, but the report was certainly unfounded. Whether, if he had lived, he would have saved his head, is doubtful; for when Richelieu had once resolved to have a man’s head, it was not easy to disappoint him. Among the few whom justice, not tyranny or caprice, immured within the walls of the Bastile, may be reckoned Francis, count de Bouteville, of the ancient and illustrious family of Montmorenci, whose father, Louis de Montmorenci, was vice-admiral of France in the reign of Henry the fourth. The example which was made of him was necessary, to vindicate the insulted laws, and to check a murderous practice which had shed some of the best blood in the kingdom. For a long series of years, in defiance of the severe edicts issued against it by Henry IV. and Louis XIII., duelling had been carried to an extent which it is frightful to contemplate. War itself would scarcely have swept off more victims of the privileged class, than were sacrificed in private and frivolous quarrels. Paris, in particular, swarmed with professed duellists, who gloried in their exploits, and counted up their slain with the same exultation that a sportsman counts the game he has killed. Some, who prided themselves on a peculiar delicacy of honour, were ever on the watch to find a pretext for taking offence. Even to look at them, to touch any part of their dress in passing by them, or to utter a word which could be misconstrued, sufficed to draw from them a challenge to mortal combat.