Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/169

Rh of the Importants received orders to withdraw from Paris. Montrésor, Béthune, Saint-Ybar, Varicarville, and some others, were confined in the country under strict surveillance, or even forced to quit France. The Vendômes were commanded to retire to Anet; and the château d'Anet soon becoming what the hôtel de Vendôme had been in Paris,—the asylum of the conspirators,—Mazarin demanded them of the Duke César, who took good care not to deliver them. The cardinal was compelled almost regularly to besiege the château. He threatened to enter it by force, to seize the accomplices of Beaufort, and no longer to endure the scandal of a prince who braved justice and the laws with impunity; he believed himself in the right, and was about to take energetic measures when the Duke de Vendôme decided to quit France himself, and repaired to Italy to await the fall of Mazarin, as he had formerly awaited that of Richelieu in England.

The arrest of Beaufort, the dispersion of his accomplices, his friends, and his family, was the first, the indispensable measure which Mazarin needed to take to face the most pressing danger. But what would it avail him to strike the arm if the head were permitted to remain,—if Madame de Chevreuse still remained assiduous in her attendance at court, lavishing attentions and homage on the queen, and thus retaining and making the most of the remains of her former favor to sustain and secretly encourage the malcontents, to inspire them with her confidence, and to raise up new conspiracies? She still held in her hand the scarce-broken thread of the plot, and by her side was a man too experienced to suffer himself to be compromised in such intrigues, but quite ready to turn them to his profit, and whom Madame de Chevreuse was