he Duke of Anjou protested his fidelity to his brother, and
promised the cardinal to place in the king's hands a written undertaking
to submit his wishes and affections to him. The intrigue appeared to
have been abandoned. But the "_dreadful (epouvantable) faction,_" as the
Cardinal calls it in his _Memoires,_ conspired to remove the young prince
from the court. The Duke of Vendome, son of Henry IV. and Gabrielle
d'Estrees, had offered him an asylum in his government of Brittany; but
the far-sighted policy of the minister took away this refuge from the
heir to the throne, always inclined as he was to put himself at the head
of a party. The Duke of Vendome and his brother the Grand Prior,
disquieted at the rumors which were current about them, hastened to go
and visit the king at Blois. He received them with great marks of
affection. "Brother," said he to the Duke of Vendome, laying his hand
upon his shoulder, "I was impatient to see you." Next morning, the 15th
of June, the two princes were arrested in bed. "Ah! brother," cried
Vendome, "did not I tell you in Brittany that we should be arrested?"
"I wish I were dead, and you were there," said the Grand Prior. "I told
you, you know, that the castle of Blois was a fatal place for princes,"
rejoined the duke. They were conducted to Amboise. The king,
continually disquieted by the projects of assassination hatched against
his minister, gave him a company of musketeers as guards, and set off for
Nantes, whither the cardinal was not slow to go and join him. In the
interval, a fresh accomplice in the plot had been discovered.

This time it was in the king's own household that he had been sought and
found. Henry de Talleyrand, Count of Chalais, master of the wardrobe,
hare-brained and frivolous, had hitherto made himself talked about only
for-his duels and his successes with women. He had already been drawn
into a plot against the cardinal's life; but, under the influence of
remorse, he had confessed his criminal intentions to the minister
himself. Richelieu appeared touched by the repentance, but he did not
forget the offence, and his watch over this "unfortunate gentleman," as
he himself calls him, made him aware before long that Chalais was
compromised in an intrigue which aimed at nothing less, it was said, than
to secure the person of the cardinal by means an ambush, so as to rid
him at need. Chalais was arrested in his bed on the 8th of July. The
Marquis