near the river, at whose house there were eleven persons on Monday evening. Question the lackeys of the aforesaid D'Avancourt and Brassy, etc." "The brother of Brassy says that the Duke de Vendôme is displeased with them because they suffered themselves to be taken without resistance."[1] The Importants were much disquieted for fear of some revelations which the two prisoners might make. Mazarin spread the report that Avancourt and Brassy had said nothing of importance, and that the affair would end in nothing, in order to lull the vigilance and the fears of the fugitives, and embolden them to leave their retreat, and come to be captured at Paris. "Tremblay"[2] (the governor of the Bastille) "has told me that Limoges (Lafayette, the Bishop de Limoges, one of the chiefs of the Importants in the Church) bears me much malice, and that he has begged to know what the two prisoners have said, ending by saying that the Cardinal Mazarin would be finely hoaxed, and that he had only caused them be arrested and thrown into the Bastille in order to seem to justify the injury done to the Duke de Beaufort. I have ordered Tremblay to tell Limoges that the two prisoners made no confession, but defended themselves very plausibly, in order to confirm him in the opinion which he holds, so that, on giving this information
- ↑ At Paris, no one doubted but the affair of these two gentlemen was seriously prosecuted. A very curious private correspondence, preserved in the archives of foreign affairs, France, vol. cv., contains a letter from a person called Gaudin to Servien, the skilful diplomatist, under date of October 31, 1643, in which the following passage is found, which repeats almost verbatim the words of the Carnets: "Search has been made in the inns of the Faubourg Saint Germain, where the two gentlemen now imprisoned in the Bastille lodged. On seeing that nothing could be discovered from their examination nor that of their lackeys, the hosts and hostesses of the said inns, namely, of the Sauvage and of some other, were also imprisoned, in the hope to intimidate them and draw from them some confession of the deed of which they are accused; this availed nothing, and they have been released."
- ↑ IV. Carnet, p. 9.
