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.

Louis forgot his former affection for his brilliant favourite in his
fear of the minister who sought his destruction; while the heartless and
ungrateful Gas