“Arrest the Duke! Arrest the prime minister of King Charles I! Think of it, sire! What a scandal! And if the suspicions of your Majesty, which I still continue to doubt, should prove to have any foundation, what a terrible disclosure, what a fearful scandal!”

“But as he exposed himself like a vagabond or a thief, he should have been — ”

Louis XIII stopped, terrified at what he was about to say, while Richelieu, stretching out his neck, waited uselessly for the word which had died on the lips of the king.

“He should have been — ?”

“Nothing,” said the king, “nothing. But all the time he was in Paris, you, of course, did not lose sight of him?”