Tours on the occasion of Richelieu's triumph had heard a good account of
me from the queen, and invited me to see her; we soon struck up a very
great friendship, and I came to be a confidential intermediary between
the queen and her, and was often entrusted by one or other of them with
most perilous commissions.

When I was at last readmitted to court in 1637, I found the queen in
great trouble. She had been accused of a crime against the state, a
treasonable understanding with the Spanish minister; some of her
servants were arrested; the chancellor examined her like a criminal; it
was even proposed to seclude her at Havre, annul her marriage, and
repudiate her altogether. In this extremity, abandoned by all the world,
she proposed that I should kidnap her and Mademoiselle d'Hautefort and
carry them off to Brussels. Difficult and dangerous as this project was,
it gave me greater joy than any I had known, for I was at an age when a
man likes to engage in dashing and heroic feats. Happily, however, the
chancellor's investigations proved her majesty not guilty.

But an unfortunate series of accidents led to my imprisonment for a week
in the Bastille. A signal had been agreed upon between the queen and
Madame de Chevreuse during the recent trouble. If all went well, Madame
de Chevreuse was to receive a prayer-book bound in green, but a red
binding was to indicate disaster. I never knew which of the two ladies
made the mistake, but when the queen was acquitted Madame de Chevreuse
received what she took to be the signal of misfortune; concluded that
both she and the queen were undone, and disguising herself as a man, she
fled to Spain. This escapade, so surprising at the very moment when the
Queen's troubles had come to an end, inspired the king and the cardinal
with the gravest suspicions that they had not, after all, fathomed her
majesty's treachery. The cardinal summoned me to Paris, and hinted at
unpleasant consequences if I did not reveal all I knew. I knew nothing;
and as my manner seemed more reserved and dry than he was accustomed to,
I was sent to the Bastille.

The little time that I spent there showed me more vividly than anything
I had yet seen the picture of vengeance. I saw there men of great names
and of great merits, an infinite number of men and women of all ranks in
life, all unhappy in the affliction of long and cruel incarceration. The
sight of so many pitiable creatures did much to increase my natural