All my friends were alarmed at this, and were for sending me in all haste to Italy. Accordingly, I went to Venice, stayed there till the middle of August, and was very near being assassinated; for I amused myself by making an intrigue with Signora Vendranina, a noble Venetian lady, and one of the most handsome I ever saw. M. de Maille, the King’s ambassador, aware of the dangerous consequences of such adventures in this country, ordered me to depart from Venice; upon which I went through Lombardy, and towards the end of September arrived at Rome, where the Marechal d’Estrees, who resided there as ambassador, gave me such instructions for my behaviour as I followed to a tittle. Though I had no design to be an ecclesiastic, yet since I wore a cassock I was resolved to acquire some reputation at the Pope’s Court. I compassed my design very happily, avoiding any appearance of gallantry and lewdness, and my dress being grave to the last degree; but for all this I was at a vast expense, having fine liveries, a very splendid equipage, and a train of seven or eight gentlemen, whereof four were Knights of Malta. I disputed in the Colleges of Sapienza (not to be compared for learning with those of the Sorbonne), and fortune continued still to raise me. For the Prince de Schomberg, the Emperor’s ambassador, sent me word one day, while I was playing at ‘balon’ at the baths of Antoninus, to leave the place clear for him. I answered that I could have refused his Excellency nothing asked in a civil manner, but since it was commanded, I would have him to know that I would obey the orders of no ambassador whatever, but that of the King, my master. Being urged a second time by one of his attendants to leave the place, I stood upon my own defence, and the Germans, more, in my opinion, out of contempt of the few people I had with me than out of any other consideration, let the affair drop. This bold carriage of so modest an abbe, to an ambassador who never went abroad without one hundred musketeers on horseback to attend him, made a great noise in Rome, and was much taken notice of by Cardinal Mazarin.
The Cardinal de Richelieu’s health declining, the archbishopric of Paris was now almost within my ken, which, together with other prospects of good benefices, made me resolve not to fling off the cassock but upon honourable terms and valuable considerations; but having nothing yet within my view that I could be sure of, I resolved to distinguish myself in my own profession by all the methods I could. I retired from the world, studied very hard, saw but very few men, and had no more correspondence with any of the female sex, except Madame de———.
The devil had appeared to the Princesse de Guemenee just a fortnight before this adventure happened, and was often raised by the conjurations of M. d’Andilly, to frighten his votary, I believe, into piety, for he was even more in love with her person than I myself; but he loved her in the Lord, purely and spiritually. I raised, in my turn, a demon that appeared to her in a more kind and agreeable form. In six weeks I got her away from Port Royal; I was very diligent in paying her my respects, and the satisfaction I had in her company, with some other agreeable diversions, qualified in a great measure the chagrin which attended my profession, to which I was not yet heartily reconciled. This enchantment had like to have raised such a storm as would have given a new face to the affairs of Europe if fortune had been ever so little on my side.
M. the Cardinal de Richelieu loved rallying other people, but could not bear a jest himself, and all men of this humour are always very crabbed and churlish; of which the Cardinal gave an instance, in a public assembly of ladies, to Madame de Guemenee, when he threw out a severe jest, which everybody observed was pointed at me. She was sensibly affronted, but I was enraged. For at last there was a sort of an understanding between us, which was often ill-managed, yet our interests were inseparable. At this time Madame de La Meilleraye, with whom, though she was silly, I had fallen in love, pleased the Cardinal to that degree that the Marshal perceived it before he set out for the army, and rallied his wife in such a manner that she immediately found he was even more jealous than ambitious. She was terribly afraid of him, and did not love the Cardinal, who, by marrying her to his cousin, had lessened his own family, of which he was extremely fond. Besides, the Cardinal’s infirmities made him look a great deal older than he was. And though all his other actions had no tincture of pedantry, yet in his amorous intrigues he had the most of it in the world. I had a detail of all the steps he had made therein, which were extremely ridiculous. But continuing his solicitation, and carrying her to his country seat at Ruel—[The Cardinal de Richelieu’s seat, three leagues from Paris.]—where he kept her a considerable time, I guessed that the lady had not brains enough to resist the splendour of Court favour, and that her husband’s jealousy would soon give way to his interest, but, above all, to his blind side, which was an attachment to the Court not to be equalled. When I was in the hottest pursuit of this passion I proposed to myself the most exquisite pleasures in triumphing over the Cardinal de Richelieu in this fair field of battle; but on a sudden I had the mortification to hear the whole family was changed. The husband allowed his wife to go to Ruel as often as she pleased, and her behaviour towards me I suspected to be false and treacherous. In short, Madame de Guemenee’s anger, for a reason I hinted before, my jealousy of Madame de La Meilleraye, and an aversion to my own profession, all joined together in a fatal moment and were near producing one of the greatest and most famous events of our age.
La Rochepot, my first cousin and dear friend, was a domestic of the late Duc d’Orleans—[Gaston Jean Baptists de France, born 1608, and died at Blois, 1660.]—and his great confidant. He mortally hated the Cardinal de Richelieu, who had persecuted his mother, and had her hung up in effigy, and kept his father still a prisoner in the Bastille, and now refused the son a regiment, though Marechal de La Meilleraye, who very highly esteemed him for his courage, interceded for the favour. You may imagine that when we came together we did not forget the Cardinal.
I being crossed in my designs, as I told you, and as full of resentment as La Rochepot was for the affronts put upon his person and family, we chimed in our thoughts and resolutions, which were, dexterously to manage the weakness of the Duc d’Orleans and to put that in execution which the boldness of his domestics had almost effected at Corbie.
The Duc d’Orleans was appointed General, and the Comte de Soissons Lieutenant-General of the King’s forces in Picardy, but neither of them stood well with the Cardinal, who gave them those posts only because the situation of affairs was such that he could not help it. L’Epinai, Montresor, and La Rochepot made use of all the arguments they could think of to raise jealousies and fears in the Duc d’Orleans, and to inspire him with resolution and courage to rid himself of the Cardinal. Others laboured to persuade the Comte de Soissons to relish the same proposal, but though resolved upon, it was never put into execution. For they had the Cardinal in their power at Amiens, but did him no harm. For this every one blamed the Count’s companion, but I could never yet learn the true cause; only this is certain, that they were no sooner come to Paris than they were all seized with a panic, and retired, some one way, some another.
The Comte de Guiche, since Marechal de Grammont, and M. de Chavigni, Secretary of State and the Cardinal’s most intimate favourite, were sent by the King to Blois. Here they frightened the Duc d’Orleans and made him return to Paris, where he was more afraid than ever; for such of his domestics as were not gained by the Court made use of his pusillanimous temper, and represented to him the necessity he was under to provide for his own, or rather their, security. La Rochepot and myself endeavoured to heighten his fears as much as possible, in order to precipitate him into our measures. The term sounds odd, but it is the most expressive I could find of a character like the Duke’s. He weighed everything, but fixed on nothing; and if by chance he was inclined to do one thing more than another, he would never execute it without being pushed or forced into it.
La Rochepot did all he could to fix him, but finding that the Duke was always for delays, and for perplexing all expedients with groundless fears of invincible difficulties, he fell upon an expedient very dangerous to all appearance, but, as it usually happens in extraordinary cases, much less so than at first view.
Cardinal de Richelieu having to stand godfather at the baptism of Mademoiselle, La Rochepot’s proposal was to continue to show the Duke the necessity he lay under still to get rid of the Cardinal, without saying much of the particulars, for fear of hazarding the secret, but only to entertain him with the general proposal of that affair, thereby to make him the better in love with the measures when proposed; and that they might, at a proper time and place,