person, a stranger
to these dark plots and even incapable of putting faith in them--a very
different enemy of Mazarin--the pious and noble Madame de Hautefort. As
for the Duke, careless and courageous, he had gone to the chase in the
morning, and at his return he went, according to his custom, to present
his homage to the Queen. On entering the Louvre he met his mother,
Madame de Vendome, and his sister the Duchess de Nemours, who had
accompanied the Queen all day and remarked her emotion. They did all
they could to prevent him going up stairs, and entreated him to absent
himself for a while. He, without troubling himself in the slightest
degree, answered them in the words of the doomed Duke de Guise--"They
dare not!"--and entered the Queen's great cabinet, who received him with
the best grace possible, and asked him all sorts of questions about his
hunting, "as though," says Madame de Motteville, "she had no other
thought in her mind." The Cardinal having come in in the midst of this
gentle chat, the Queen rose and bade him follow her. It appeared as if
she wished to take counsel with him in her chamber. She entered it,
followed by her Minister. At the same time the Duke de Beaufort, about
to leave, met Guitant, captain of the guard, who arrested him, and
commanded the Duke to follow him in the names of the King and Queen. The
Prince, without showing any surprise, after having looked fixedly at
him, said, "Yes, I will; but this, I must own, is strange enough." Then
turning towards Mesdames de Chevreuse and de Hautefort, who were talking
together, he said to them, "Ladies, you see that the Queen has caused me
to be arrested." The young nobleman then submitted to the royal mandate
without offering the slightest resistance; slept that night at the
Louvre, and the next morning was taken to the donjon of Vincennes, while
a general decree of banishment was pronounced against all the principal
members of the faction.

The Vendomes were ordered to retire to Anet; and the Chateau d'Anet
having soon become what the Hotel de Vendome at Paris had been, a haunt
of the conspirators, Mazarin demanded them from the Duke Caesar, who took
good care not to give them up. The Cardinal was almost reduced to the
necessity of laying siege to the chateau in regular form. He threatened
to enter the place by main force and lay hands on Beaufort's
accomplices; unable to endure the scandal that a prince even of the
blood should brave law and just