Eighteen months had barely rolled away when Colonel Ornano, lately created a marshal at the Duke of Anjou’s request, was again arrested and carried off a prisoner “to the very room where, twenty-four years ago, Marshal Biron had been confined.”  For some time past “it had been current at court and throughout the kingdom that a great cabal was going on,” says Richelieu in his Memoires, “and the cabalists said quite openly that under his ministry, men might cabal with impunity, for he was not a dangerous enemy.”  If the cabalists had been living in that confidence, they were most wofully deceived.  Richelieu was neither meddlesome nor cruel, but he was stern and pitiless towards the sufferings as well as the supplications of those who sought to thwart his policy.  At this period, he wished to bring about a marriage between the Duke of Anjou, then eighteen years old, and Mdlle. de Montpensier, the late Duke of Montpensier’s daughter, and the richest heiress in France.  The young prince did not like it.  Madame de Chevreuse, it was said, seeing the king an invalid and childless, was already anticipating his death, and the possibility of marrying his widowed queen to his successor.  “I should gain too little by the change,” said Anne of Austria one day, irritated by the accusations of which she was the object.  Divers secret or avowed motives had formed about the Duke of Anjou what was called the “aversion” party, who were opposed to his marriage; but the arrest of Colonel Ornano dismayed the accomplices for a while.  The Duke of Anjou protested his fidelity to his brother, and promised the cardinal to place in the king’s hands a written undertaking to submit his wishes and affections to him.  The intrigue appeared to have been abandoned.  But the “dreadful (epouvantable) faction,” as the Cardinal calls it in his Memoires, conspired to remove the young prince from the court.  The Duke of Vendome, son of Henry IV. and Gabrielle d’Estrees, had offered him an asylum in his government of Brittany; but the far-sighted policy of the minister took away this refuge from the heir to the throne, always inclined as he was to put himself at the head of a party.  The Duke of Vendome and his brother the Grand Prior, disquieted at the rumors which were current about them, hastened to go and visit the king at Blois.  He received them with great marks of affection.  “Brother,” said he to the Duke of Vendome, laying his hand upon his shoulder, “I was impatient to see you.”  Next morning, the 15th of June, the two princes were arrested in bed.  “Ah! brother,” cried Vendome, “did not I tell you in Brittany that we should be arrested?” “I wish I were dead, and you were there,” said the Grand Prior.  “I told you, you know, that the castle of Blois was a fatal place for princes,” rejoined the duke.  They were conducted to Amboise.  The king, continually disquieted by the projects of assassination hatched against his minister, gave him a company of musketeers as guards, and set off for Nantes, whither the cardinal was not slow to go and join him.  In the interval, a fresh accomplice in the plot had been discovered.