Part 32

The door of the council chamber opened. The king and the cardinal came out together and descended the stairs in company, Richelieu attending Louis until he had reached the foot of the stairway, and gone into an adjoining room. The cardinal turned to ascend again, without a moment's suspicion that the two gentlemen at the stair-foot clutched hidden daggers in their hands, ready, at a signal from the duke, who stood near by, to plunge them in his breast.

The signal did not come. At the last moment the courage of Gaston of Orleans failed him. Whether from something in Richelieu's earnest and dignified aspect, or some sudden fear of serious consequences to himself, the chief conspirator turned hastily away, without speaking the fatal word agreed upon. What the duke feared to do, the count dared not do. The two chosen assassins stood expectant, greeting the cardinal as he passed, and waiting in nervous impatience for the promised signal. It failed to come. Their daggers remained undrawn. Richelieu calmly ascended the stairs to his rooms, without a dream of the deadly peril he had run.

The conspiracy against the cardinal which has attained the greatest historical notoriety is that associated with the name of Cinq-Mars, the famous favorite of Louis XIII. Brilliant and witty, a true type of the courtiers of the time, this handsome youth so amused and interested the king that, when he was only nineteen years of age, Louis made him master of the wardrobe and grand equerry of France. M. Le Grand he was called, and grand enough he seemed, in his independent and capricious dealings with the king. Louis went so far as to complain to Richelieu of the humors of his youthful favorite.

"I am very sorry," he wrote, under date of January 4, 1641, "to trouble you about the ill-tempers of M. Le Grand. I upbraided him with his heedlessness; he answered that for that matter he could not change, and that he should do no better than he had done. I said that, considering his obligations to me, he ought not to address me in that manner. He answered in his usual way; that he didn't want my kindness, that he could do very well without it, and that he would be quite as well content to be Cinq-Mars as M. Le Grand, but as for changing his ways and his life, he couldn't do it. And so, he continually nagging at me and I at him, we came as far as the court-yard, where I said to him that, being in the temper he was in, he would do me the pleasure of not coming to see me. I have not seen him since."

This letter yields a curious revelation of the secret history of a royal court. There have been few kings with whom such impudent independence would have served. Louis XIII. was one of them. Cinq-Mars seems to have known his man. The quarrel was not of long continuance. Richelieu, who had first placed the youth near the king, easily reconciled them, a service which the foolish boy soon repaid by lending an ear to the enemies of the cardinal. For this Richelieu was in a way responsible. He had begun to find the constant attendance of the favorite upon the king troublesome to himself, and gave him plainly to understand so. "One day he sent word to him not to be for the future so continually at his heels, and treated him even to his face with as much tartness and imperiousnesss as if he had been the lowest of his valets." Such treatment was not likely to be well received by one of the independent disposition of Cinq-Mars. He joined in a plot against the cardinal.

The king was ill; the cardinal more so. Gaston, Duke of Orleans, was again in Paris, and full of his old intriguing spirit. The Duke of Bouillon was there also, having been sent for by the king to take command of the army of Italy. He, too, was drawn into the plot which was being woven against Richelieu. The queen, Anne of Austria, was another of the conspirators. The plot thus organized was the deepest and most far-reaching which had yet been laid against the all-powerful minister.

Bouillon was prince-sovereign of the town of Sedan. This place was to serve the conspirators as an asylum in case of reverse. But a town was not enough; an army was needed; whence should it come? Spain might furnish it.

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."

Had a thunderbolt fallen in their midst, the enemies of Richelieu could not have been in greater consternation than at this simple item of news. How came it about? The fox was not asleep. Nor had his illness robbed his hand and his brain of their cunning. The king, overladen with affairs of state from which his minister when well had usually relieved him, sent a message of confidence to Richelieu, indicating that his enemies would seek in vain to separate them. In reply the cardinal sent the king a document which filled the monarch with an astonishment that was only equalled by his wrath. It was a copy of the secret treaty of Orleans with Spain!

The king could hardly believe his eyes. So this was what lay behind the insinuations of Cinq-Mars? An insurrection was projected against the state! The cardinal, mayhap the king himself, was to be overthrown by force of arms! Only the sleepless vigilance of Richelieu could have discovered and exposed this perilous plot. It remained for the king to second the work of his minister by decisive action. An order was at once issued for the arrest of Cinq-Mars and his intimate friend, M. de Thou; while a messenger was sent off in all haste to the army of Italy, bearing orders for the arrest of the Duke of Bouillon at the head of his troops.

Fontrailles, just arrived from his mission to Spain, returned to that kingdom with all haste, having first said to Cinq-Mars, "Sir, you are a fine figure; if you were shorter by the whole head you would not cease to be very tall. As for me, who am already very short, nothing could be taken off me without inconveniencing me and making me cut the poorest figure in the world. You will be good enough, if you please, to let me get out of the way of edge tools."

The minor parties to the conspiracy, with the exception of the prudent Fontrailles, were in custody. The most guilty of all, the king's brother, was at large. What part was he to play in the drama of retribution? Flight, or treachery to his accomplices, alone remained to him. He chose the latter, sending an agent to the king, who had just joined the cardinal at Tarascon, with directions to confess everything and implore for him the pardon of his royal brother. The cardinal questioned this agent, the Abbe de la Riviere, with unrelenting severity, made him write and sign everything, and was inclined to make the prince-duke appear as a witness at the trial, and yield up his accomplices in the face of the world. This final disgrace, however, was omitted at the wish of Louis, and an order of exile was sent from the king to his brother, which bore this note in the cardinal's hand,--

"Monsieur will have in his place of exile twelve thousand crowns a month, the same sum that the king of Spain had promised to give him."

The dying cardinal had triumphed over all his foes. He had, from his bed at Tarascon, dictated to the king the course to be pursued, entailing dishonor to the Duke of Orleans and death to the grand equerry of France. The king then took his way back to Fontainebleau in the litter of the cardinal, which the latter had lent him. Richelieu did not remain long behind him. He was conveyed to his house in Lyons in a litter shaped like a square chamber, covered with red damask, and borne on the shoulders of eighteen guards. Within, beside his couch, was a table covered with papers, at which he worked with his ordinary diligence, chatting pleasantly at intervals with such of his servants as accompanied him. In the same equipage he left Lyons for the Loire, on his return to Paris. On the way it was necessary to pull down walls and bridge ditches that this great litter, in which the greatest man in France lay in mortal illness, might pass.

What followed needs few words. The Duke of Bouillon confessed everything, and was pardoned on condition of his delivering up Sedan to the king. He was kept in prison, however, till after the death of his accomplices, Cinq-Mars and De Thou, who were tried and sentenced to execution.

Bouillon had not long to wait. The execution took place on the very day on which sentence had been pronounced. The two culprits met death firmly. Cinq-Mars was but twenty-two years of age. He had rapidly run his course. "Now that I make not a single step which does not lead me to death, I am more capable than anybody else of estimating the value of the things of the world," he wrote. "Enough of this world; away to Paradise!" said De Thou, as he walked to the scaffold.

There were no more conspiracies against Richelieu. There was no time for them, for in less than three months afterwards he was dead. The greatest, or at least the most dramatic, minister known to the pages of history had departed from this world. His royal master did not long survive him. In five months afterwards, Louis XIII. had followed his minister to the grave.

THE PARLIAMENT OF PARIS.

In the streets of Paris all was tumult and fiery indignation. Never had there been a more sudden or violent outbreak. The whole city seemed to have turned into the streets. Not until the era of the Revolution, a century and a half later, was the capital of France again to see such an uprising of the people against the court. Broussel had been arrested, Councillor Broussel, a favorite of the populace, who sustained him in his opposition to the court party, and at once the city was ablaze; for the first time in the history of France had the people risen in support of their representatives.

It was by no means the first time that royalty had ended its disputes with the Parliament in this summary manner. Four years previously, Anne of Austria, the queen-regent, had done the same thing, and scarce a voice had been raised in protest. But in the ensuing four years public opinion had changed. The king, Louis XIV., was but ten years old; his mother, aided by her favorite minister, Cardinal Mazarin, ruled the kingdom,--misruled it, as the people thought; the country was crushed under its weight of taxes; the finances were in utter disorder; France was successful abroad, but her successes had been dearly bought, and the people groaned under the burden of their victories. Parliament made itself the mouth-piece of the public discontent. It no longer felt upon it the iron hand of Richelieu. Mazarin was able, but he was not a master, and the Parliament began once more to claim that authority in affairs of state from which it had been deposed by the great cardinal. A conflict arose between the members and the court which soon led to acts of open hostility.

An edict laying a tax upon all provisions which entered Paris irritated the citizens, and the Parliament refused to register it. Other steps towards independence were taken by the members. Gradually they resumed their old rights, and the court party was forced to yield. But courage returned to the queen-regent with the news that the army of France had gained a great victory. No sooner had the tidings reached Paris than the city was electrified by hearing that President Brancmesnil and Councillor Broussel had been arrested.

It was the arrest of Broussel that stirred the popular heart. Mazarin and the queen had made the dangerous mistake of not taking into account the state of the public mind. "There was a blaze at once, a sensation, a rush, an outcry, and a shutting up of shops." The excitement of the people was intense. Moment by moment the tumult grew greater. "Broussel! Broussel!" they shouted. That perilous populace had arisen which was afterwards to show what frightful deeds it could do under the impulse of oppression and misgovernment.

Paul de Gondi, afterwards known as Cardinal de Retz, then coadjutor of the Archbishop of Paris, and the leading spirit with the populace, hurried to the palace, accompanied by Marshal de la Meilleraie.

"The city is in a frightful state," they told the queen. "The people are furious and may soon grow unmanageable. The air is full of revolt."

Anne of Austria listened to them with set lips and angry eyes.