Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/158

144 some good deeds, he nevertheless confesses that he had entered into the plot, and that, if the execution had taken place, he would have shared in it, by fighting at the side of Beaufort. The suit instituted before parliament having been broken off for want of proofs. Campion did not suppose that Mazarin had ever known "the circumstances of the plot, nor who they were that knew it to the bottom and were concerned in it." He says also that, "now that the cardinal is dead, there is no longer any fear of injuring any one by telling things as they are." He does not, therefore, defend himself; he believes himself sheltered from all pursuit, and he only writes to relieve his conscience. Now what he says is precisely the same that Mazarin, on his side, had drawn from his various informants.

We have seen what importance Mazarin attached to the arrest of D'Avancourt and De Brassy, and what art he used in spreading the report that they had disclosed nothing in their examination, in order to remove all anxiety from those whom they might have compromised, and thus to draw them to Paris, where they would not fail to be taken. Henri de Campion assures us that he was especially in question, and really seems to be translating into French one of the Italian passages of the Carnets. "Avancourt and Brassy were taken to the Bastille," says he, "where they deposed that I had summoned them several times in behalf of the Duke de Beaufort for the interests of Madame de Montbazon as I had told them. This furnished no pretext for examining the duke, as they confessed that he had not spoken to them; he did not fail, therefore, to deny having given the orders which I had carried to them in his behalf; it was evident from this, that his trial could not be proceeded with until I had been taken, and matter found from my own depositions whereon to question him and to embarrass us both, and thus to discover some trace of the affair. The proofs of this conspiracy were of essential importance to the cardinal, who, wishing only to establish himself in the government, and affecting to do so by gentleness, was very