I answered him: "If I were not wiser than you I know what I should answer to that!" ... After that I said to him that he ought not to speak to me in such fashion. He answered after the manner of his usual discourse that at present his only duty appeared to be to do good to me and to be agreeable to me and that as to such business he could get along very well without it! He said that he would as willingly be Cinq-Mars as to be M. le Grand; and that as to changing his ways and his manner of life, he could not do it! ... And so it went! he pecking at me and I pecking at him until we reached the courtyard; when I said to him that as he was in such a humour he would do me pleasure if he would refrain from showing himself before me any more. He bore witness that he would do that same right willingly! I have not seen him since then.
Precisely as I have told you all that passed, in the presence of Gordes.
I have shown Gordes this memorandum before sending it, and he has told me that there is nothing in it but the truth, exactly as he heard it and saw it pass.
Cinq-Mars sulked and the King sulked, and as the quarrel promised to endure indefinitely, Richelieu bestirred himself, left his quiet home in Rueil and travelled to the house of the King to make peace between the ill-assorted pair.
[Illustration: A GAME OF CHANCE IN THE 17TH CENTURY
Peace restored, Louis became joyful; he could not refuse his favourite anything. Cinq-Mars made the most of his opportunity. But he could not go far; the Cardinal barred his way. Cinq-Mars aspired to the peerage; he aimed to be a duke, to marry a princess, and to sit among the King's counsellors. Richelieu checked him, gave him rude orders, scolded him as he scolded his valet, called him an "insolent little fellow," and threatened to put him in a place "still lower" than the place from which he had raised him.[81] One day, when Richelieu was berating the favourite, he told him that he had appointed him to his office in the King's house so that he (Richelieu) might have a reliable spy, and that as he had been appointed for no other purpose, it would be advisable for him to begin to do the work that he was expected to do.
The revelation was a cruel blow to the proud and sensitive boy, and in the first moment of his anguish he conceived a ferocious hatred. It is probable that the knowledge that the Cardinal had placed him near the King's person against his will and in spite of his long and determined resistance solely to the end that he might be degraded to an ignoble office was the first cause of the Cinq-Mars conspiracy.