that he wrote at
sufficiently considerable distance from the event, in safety, and, to
repeat it once again, with no interest, fearing nothing more from
Mazarin, who had recently died, and expecting nothing from him. It must
be also remembered that speaking as he has done, he accuses his own
brother; that, without doubt, he attributes to himself laudable
intentions and even some good actions, but that he confesses having
entered into the plot, and that, if its execution had taken place he
would have taken part in it, in fighting by the side of Beaufort. The
process submitted to the parliament not having led to anything, through
failure of evidence, Campion did not imagine that Mazarin had ever
known "the circumstances of the plot, nor those acquainted with it to
the very bottom, and who were engaged in it." He adds also, "that now
the Cardinal is dead there is no longer any reason to fear injuring any
one in stating matters as they are." He therefore does not defend
himself; he believes himself to be sheltered from all quest, he writes
only to relieve his conscience.

From these curious revelations we further learn what importance Mazarin
attached to the arrest of Henri Campion; and that writer's statements
are not only substantially confirmed by various entries in the
_carnets_, but read like a translation into French of those pages from
the Cardinal's Italian. "They threw," he says, "into the Bastille,
Avancourt and Brassy, where they deposed that I had mustered them on
several occasions, on the part of the Duke de Beaufort, for the
interests of Madame de Montbazon, as I had told them. This did not
afford any motive for interrogating the Duke, since they owned that he
had not spoken to them; thus he would not have failed to deny having
given the orders which I carried to them on his part. It was then seen
that the process against him could not be carried on before I had been
arrested, in order to find matter whereon to interrogate him after my
own depositions, and so thoroughly to embarrass us both that every trace
of the affair might be discovered. The proof of this conspiracy was of
most essential importance to the Cardinal, who directing all his efforts
to the establishment of his government, and affecting to do so by gentle
means, had been unfortunate enough to be constrained, in the outset, to
use violence against one of the greatest men in the realm, for his own
individual interest, without a conviction to prov