Circumstances favoured his project. The two first Princes of the Blood, M. de Condé and the Comte de Soissons, had at this period a serious quarrel as to who should present the finger-napkin to the King at the dinner-table; Condé claiming that privilege as first Prince of the Blood, and Soissons maintaining that it was his right as Grand Master of the Royal Household. The two great nobles, heedless of the presence of the sovereign, both seized a corner of the _serviette_, which either refused to relinquish; and the quarrel became at length so loud and so unseemly that Louis endeavoured to restore peace by commanding that it should be presented by his brother the Duc d'Anjou. But although the two angry Princes were compelled to yield the object of contention, he could not reduce them to silence; and this absurd dissension immediately split the Court into two factions; the Duc de Guise and the friends of the favourite declaring themselves for Condé; while Mayenne, Longueville, and several others espoused the cause of the Comte de Soissons. It is almost ludicrous to be compelled to record that out of a quarrel, originating in a servile endeavour on the part of the two principal nobles of a great nation to usurp the functions of a _maître-d'hôtel_, grew an attempt at civil war, which, had not the treachery of Richelieu nipped it in the bud, might have involved France in a sanguinary and unnatural series of conflicts that would have rendered that country a frightful spectacle to all Europe. Thus it was, however; for the Comtesse de Soissons, the mother of the young Prince, who was then only in his seventeenth year, eagerly seized so favourable an opportunity to weaken the party of the Prince de Condé, whose sudden influence threatened the future prospects of her son, by attaching to the cause of Marie de Medicis all the nobles who were opposed to the favourite, and consequently to the first Prince of the Blood by whom he was supported in his pretensions. The ambition of the Countess was to obtain for her young son the hand of Madame Henriette de France, the third sister of the King; an alliance which she was aware would be strenuously opposed by Condé, and which she could only hope to accomplish through the good offices of the Queen-mother; and it was consequently essential that, in order to carry out her views, she should labour to augment the faction of Marie. Her efforts were successful; between the 29th of March and the 30th of June the Ducs de Mayenne and de Vendôme, the Grand Prior (the brother of the latter), the Comte de Candale, the Archbishop of Toulouse, and Henry of Savoy, Duc de Nemours, all proceeded to Angers; an example which was speedily followed by the Comte and Comtesse de Soissons, and the Ducs de Longueville, de Trémouille, de Retz, and de Rohan; who, one and all, urged Marie de Medicis once more to take up arms, and assert her authority.[47]