he chief conspirator turned hastily away, without speaking the
fatal word agreed upon. What the duke feared to do, the count dared not
do. The two chosen assassins stood expectant, greeting the cardinal as
he passed, and waiting in nervous impatience for the promised signal.
It failed to come. Their daggers remained undrawn. Richelieu calmly
ascended the stairs to his rooms, without a dream of the deadly peril he
had run.

The conspiracy against the cardinal which has attained the greatest
historical notoriety is that associated with the name of Cinq-Mars, the
famous favorite of Louis XIII. Brilliant and witty, a true type of the
courtiers of the time, this handsome youth so amused and interested the
king that, when he was only nineteen years of age, Louis made him master
of the wardrobe and grand equerry of France. M. Le Grand he was called,
and grand enough he seemed, in his independent and capricious dealings
with the king. Louis went so far as to complain to Richelieu of the
humors of his youthful favorite.

"I am very sorry," he wrote, under date of January 4, 1641, "to trouble
you about the ill-tempers of M. Le Grand. I upbraided him with his
heedlessness; he answered that for that matter he could not change, and
that he should do no better than he had done. I said that, considering
his obligations to me, he ought not to address me in that manner. He
answered in his usual way; that he didn't want my kindness, that he
could do very well without it, and that he would be quite as well
content to be Cinq-Mars as M. Le Grand, but as for changing his ways and
his life, he couldn't do it. And so, he continually nagging at me and I
at him, we came as far as the court-yard, where I said to him that,
being in the temper he was in, he would do me the pleasure of not coming
to see me. I have not seen him since."

This letter yields a curious revelation of the secret history of a royal
court. There have been few kings with whom such impudent independence
would have served. Louis XIII. was one of them. Cinq-Mars seems to have
known his man. The quarrel was not of long continuance. Richelieu, who
had first placed the youth near the king, easily reconciled them, a
service which the foolish boy soon repaid by lending an ear to the
enemies of the cardinal. For this Richelieu was in a way responsible. He
had begun to find the constant attendance of the favorite upon the king
troublesome to himself, and gave him plainly to understa