Always sickly and querulous, Louis was a prey to dark thoughts and fearful anticipations of early dissolution; and even while he suffered himself to be amused by the hawking, dancing, and feasting so lavishly provided for his entertainment, he was never at fault, during his frequent fits of moroseness and ill-humour, for subjects of complaint. His brother, Gaston d'Anjou, whom he at once feared and hated, was a constant theme of distrust; while the Comte de Soissons, the Duc de Montmorency, and the Prince de Chalais, his sworn adherents, were at times equally obnoxious to the suspicious and gloomy young sovereign. Then he bewailed the treachery of the Queen, whom he believed, through the agency of Richelieu, to be engaged in an intrigue with Spain dangerous to his own interests; mourned over himself because he had weakly suffered his authority to be usurped by a subject, and had not moral courage to redeem the error; and in his most confidential moments even inveighed against Richelieu with the bitterness of a sullen schoolboy, declaring that it was he who had poisoned the mind of his brother, estranged him from his wife, and deprived him of the support of the Princes of the Blood; forgetting, or wilfully overlooking the fact, that a single effort on his own part must have sufficed for his emancipation from this rule of iron.
On the departure of the Court for Fontainebleau, the Cardinal, according to his usual custom, had excused himself on the plea of ill-health from following the King; while Gaston d'Anjou, who, despite the concession that he had made, still deeply resented the affront to which he had been subjected by the arrest of his favourite, had remained in Paris. Richelieu, was, however, far from inactive in his retreat; but, while he was occupied in further schemes of self-aggrandizement, the partisans of the Prince were equally busy in devising the means of ridding themselves of a thrall so obnoxious to their pride; and after mooting several measures which were successively abandoned from their apparent impracticability, it was at length decided that, under the pretext of a hunting-party, nine of the conspirators should proceed to Fleury, and there assassinate their common enemy. Of this number was the unfortunate Chalais; who, however, before the execution of the project, confided it to a friend, by whom he was warned against any participation in so dangerous an attempt, and advised immediately to apprise the Cardinal of his danger. As the young Prince hesitated to follow this counsel, the Commandeur de Valence, who was anxious to save him from, as he believed, inevitable destruction, assured him that should he fail to communicate the conspiracy to the minister, he would himself instantly reveal it; upon which Chalais, intimidated by the threat, consented to accompany him to Richelieu, and to confess the whole.
Having listened attentively to all the details of the plot, the Cardinal courteously thanked his informants, and requested them to proceed to Fontainebleau, and to repeat what they had told him to the King. He was obeyed; and an hour before midnight Louis despatched a body of troops to Fleury, with instructions to obey the orders of the minister whatever might be their nature; while Marie de Medicis at the same time commanded the officers of her household and a number of the nobility to accompany the royal guards.
As Chalais had asserted, at three o'clock on the following morning the clerks of the kitchen to the Duc d'Anjou arrived at Fleury, and immediately commenced their preparations for the dinner of the Prince; upon which Richelieu caused them to be informed that he should leave the house at the entire disposal of Monsieur; and, escorted by the armed party that had been sent for his protection, he set out at once for Fontainebleau, where he had no sooner arrived than he went without the delay of a moment to the apartment of the King's brother. Gaston was in the act of leaving his bed, and was evidently alarmed by the sudden appearance of so unexpected a visitor; but the Cardinal, affecting not to perceive his embarrassment, merely reproached him in the most courtly terms for the precaution which he had taken, assuring him that he should have felt honoured had he relied upon his hospitality; but adding that, since his Highness had shown himself desirous of avoiding all restraint, he was happy to be at least enabled to offer him the use of his residence. The Prince, taken by surprise, and utterly disconcerted at the failure of so well organized a plot, could only stammer out his acknowledgments; and the Cardinal had no sooner heard them to an end than he requested admission to the King, where, having briefly expatiated upon his escape, he requested permission with ably-acted earnestness to retire from the Court.
As we have shown, Louis was by no means slow in deprecating the self-constituted authority of Richelieu; but he was nevertheless so well aware of his own incapacity, that the idea of being thus abandoned by a minister whose grasp of intellect and subtle policy had complicated the affairs of government until he was compelled to admit his own utter powerlessness to disentangle the involved and intricate mesh, terrified him beyond expression; nor was Marie de Medicis, whom he hastened to summon on perceiving the apparently resolute position assumed by Richelieu, less alarmed than himself.
Had the scene been enacted by three individuals of mean station, it would have been merely a painful and a degrading one, for each was alike deceiving and deceived; but as they stood there, a crowned King, a Princess born "under the purple," and a powerful minister, it presented another and a more extraordinary aspect. Stolid and resolute as were alike the mother and the son, they were totally unable to cope with the superior talent and astuteness of the man whom they had themselves raised to power; and before the termination of the interview Richelieu had convinced both that his counsels and services were essential to their own safety.
This point conceded, the wily Cardinal was enabled to make his own terms. He received the most solemn assurances of support, not only against the brother of the sovereign, but also against the Princes of the Blood and all the great nobles; while a promise was moreover made, and ratified, that he should have immediate information of every attempt to injure him in the estimation of the King; and, finally, he was offered a bodyguard, over which he was to possess the most absolute control.
This exhibition of royal weakness strengthened the hands of the haughty minister, who thus became regal in all save name and blood; and encouraged him to pursue his system of dissimulation. As mother and son vied with each other in opening before him the most brilliant perspective ever conceded to a subject, he feigned a reluctance and a humility which only tended to render their entreaties the more earnest and the more pressing; until at length, although with apparent unwillingness, he was prevailed upon to retain his post, and to crush his enemies by the exhibition of a splendour and authority hitherto without parallel in the annals of ministerial life.[97]
It was not to be anticipated that under such circumstances as these the imprudent Chalais could retain one chance of escape. Aware of his favour with the King, his fall at once relieved Richelieu of a rival, and taught the weak and capricious monarch to quail before the power of the man whom he had thus invested with almost unlimited authority; and the natural result ensued. Unwilling to admit that he sought to revenge an attempt against his own person, the Cardinal caused the unfortunate young noble to be accused of a conspiracy against the life of the King himself, and a design to effect a marriage between Anne of Austria and the Duc d'Anjou. Judges were suborned; a court was assembled; the gay and gallant Chalais, whose whole existence had hitherto been one round of pleasure and splendour, and who was, as we have fully shown, too timid and too inexperienced to enact, even with the faintest chance of success, the character of a conspirator, was put upon his trial for treason, and condemned to die upon the scaffold; nor did the efforts of his numerous friends avail to avert his fate.