“Without doubt this proposition of the King of Spain contains some hidden artifice, which his Majesty will not discover until after he has completely committed himself, and then it will be too late to remedy it.”
It is therefore not improbable that, at the beginning of the following year, La Vieuville had seized the pretext of this memorial to accuse Bassompierre of having accepted money from the Court of Madrid to advocate a proposal which was to the disadvantage of France.
However that may be, La Vieuville was very active in the matter, and in May caused the arrest of one Alphonso Lopez, a Spanish Moor, who had long resided in Paris, where he carried on an extensive trade in jewellery, tapestries, and objets d’art, and who, in the course of his business, was a frequent visitor to Bassompierre’s house, “imagining that by his means,” says the marshal, “he might discover something against me.”
Bassompierre demanded an audience of Louis XIII, who was at Compiègne, in order that he might have an opportunity of defending himself; but his Majesty did not seem anxious to grant it.
“At length, the King promised to speak to me one evening in June, on the rampart which is near his cabinet.... I said to him what God inspired me to say in favour of my innocence and against the calumny of La Vieuville; in such fashion that I stood very well with him, and he [La Vieuville] very ill. And, the better to conceal our game, the King desired me not to speak to him in public, save when I came to take the password from him, when he
would be able to say a few words to me, and I to him. And he said that he intended to seem displeased with me, and that I must not show any appearance of having been reconciled with him, and that if I had anything to say to him, it should be through the medium of Toiras, Beaumont, or the Chevalier de Souvré. Finally, after I had spoken to the King, I had no longer any doubt that La Vieuville would be completely ruined.”
However, if La Vieuville was about to be ruined, it looked very much as though he would succeed in ruining Bassompierre first, notwithstanding that Richelieu, d’Aligre, and the Constable had all assured the marshal that they were resolved not to allow the Minister to prejudice their minds against him. Le Doux, a maître des requêtes, who had been entrusted with the duty of examining Lopez’s ledgers and papers, had reported to La Vieuville that he had found that a certain Spaniard named Guadamiciles had furnished Bassompierre with a sum of 40,000 francs. The entry upon which Le Doux based this information was as follows:—