head. The court of Monsieur was already a focus of intrigues against Richelieu. Monsieur did not like his proposed marriage with Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and Anne of Austria, on her side, who had as yet no children, feared a marriage which might some day take the crown from her head, and transfer it to the house of Orleans. Henri de Talleyrand, Prince de Chalais, of the house of Perigord, came to the aid of Monsieur and the queen; he planned some dark intrigue [1] which Richelieu, perhaps, exaggerated, but which he succeeded in so firmly establishing in the mind of the king, that Louis XIII. not only abandoned Chalais as afterwards he abandoned Cinq-Mars, but remained persuaded during his whole life that the queen had been implicated in the affair, and that, he being dead or dethroned, she and Monsieur had entertained the thought of a union. Chalais mounted the first scaffold erected by Richelieu, despite the tears of his aged mother. Monsieur
- ↑ La Rochefoucauld, ibid., p. 339: "Chalais was master of the wardrobe; his person and mind were attractive, and he was devotedly attached to Madame de Chevreuse. He was accused of having formed a design against the life of the king, and of having proposed to Monsieur to break off his marriage with a view of espousing the queen on his accession to the throne. Although this crime was not fully proved, Chalais was beheaded, and the cardinal had but little difficulty in persuading the king that the queen and Madame de Chevreuse had not been ignorant of the design of Chalais." Fontenay-Mareuil, Memoires, Coll. Petitot, vol. li., p. 23: "M. de Chalais was young, well formed, expert in all kinds of exercise, and above all, agreeable in society; which rendered him a great favorite among the women, who finally caused his ruin. Fontenay says that in the midst of the affair, and despite all his pledges, he became reconciled to Richelieu, but that Madame de Chevreuse reproached him so bitterly and urged him on so strongly, that, nothing being impossible to a woman of so much beauty and wit, he was unable to resist her, and chose rather to be unfaithful to the cardinal and himself than to her, so that he had no sooner caused Monsieur to change his opinion, than he rendered him again more rebellious than ever. Had he merely counselled Monsieur to leave the court to go to La Rochelle, no one could have saved him; but it is said, and many believed it, that he went much farther.
