ted me from her service. I rejected upon the same account all the
other advantageous propositions he made me, and, he still insisting that
the Queen could do no less than confer upon me something that was very
considerable for the signal service I was likely to do her Majesty, I
answered:

"There is one point wherein the Queen can do me more good than if she
gave me a triple crown. Her Majesty told me just now that she will cause
M. le Prince to be apprehended. A person of his high rank and merit
neither can nor ought to be always shut up in prison, for when he comes
abroad he will be full of resentment against me, though I hope my dignity
will be my protection. There are a great many gentlemen engaged with me
who, in such a juncture, would be ready to serve the Queen. And if it
seemed good to your Majesty to entrust one of them with some important
employment, I should be more pleased than with ten cardinals' hats."

The Cardinal told the Queen that nothing was more just, and the affair
should be considered between him and me.

We had several conferences, at which we agreed on gratifications for some
of our friends and to arrest the Prince de Conde, the Prince de Conti,
and the Duc de Longueville.

The Cardinal took occasion to speak of the treachery of La Riviere. "This
man," said he, "takes me to be the most stupid creature living, and
thinks he shall be to-morrow a cardinal. I diverted myself to-day with
letting him try on some scarlet cloth I lately received from Italy, and I
put it near his face to know whether a scarlet colour or carnation became
him best."

I heard from Rome that his Eminence was not behindhand with La Riviere
upon the score of treachery. For on the very day he got him nominated by
the King, he wrote a letter to Cardinal Sachelli more fit to recommend
him to a yellow cap than to a red one. This letter, nevertheless, was
full of tenderness for La Riviere, which Mazarin knew was the only way to
ruin him with Pope Innocent, who hated Mazarin and all his adherents.

Madame de Chevreuse undertook to see how the Duc d'Orleans would relish
the design of imprisoning the Princes. She told him that, though the
Queen was not satisfied with M. le Prince, yet she could not form a
resolution of apprehending him without the concurrence of his Royal
Highness. She magnified the advantages of bringing over to the King's
service the powerful faction of the Fronde, and the daily dangers Paris
was exposed to, b