The king could not believe his eyes; and his wrath equalled his astonishment.  Together with that of the grand equerry he ordered the immediate arrest of M. de Thou, his intimate friend; and the order went out to secure the Duke of Bouillon, then at the head of the army of Italy.  He, caught, like Marshal Marillac, in the midst of his troops, had vainly attempted to conceal himself; but he was taken and conducted to the castle of Pignerol.  Fontrailles had seen the blow coming.  He went to visit the grand equerry, and, “Sir,” said he, “you are a fine figure; if you were shorter by the whole head, you would not cease to be very tall; as for me, who am already very short, nothing could be taken off me without inconveniencing me and making me cut the poorest figure in the world; you will be good enough, if you please, to let me get out of the way of edged tools.”  And he set out for Spain, whence he had hardly returned.

What had become of the most guilty, if not the most dangerous, of all the accomplices?  Monsieur, “the king’s only (unique) brother,” as Madame de Motteville calls him, had come as far as Moulins, and had sent to ask the grand equerry to appoint a place of meeting, when he heard of his accomplice’s arrest, and, before long, that of the Duke of Bouillon.  Frightened to death as he was, he saw that treachery was safer than flight, and, just as the king had joined the all but dying cardinal at Tarascon, there arrived an emissary from the Duke of Orleans bringing letters from him.  He assured the king of his fidelity; he entreated Chavigny, the minister’s confidant, to give him “means of seeing his Eminence before he saw the king, in which case all would go well.”  He appealed to the cardinal’s generosity, begging him to keep his letter as an eternal reproach, if he were not thenceforth the most faithful and devoted of his friends.

Abbe de La Riviere, who was charged to implore pardon for his master, was worthy of such a commission:  he confessed everything, he signed everything, though he “all but died of terror,” and, at the cardinal’s demand, he soon brought all those poltrooneries written out in the Duke of Orleans’ own hand.  The prince was all but obliged to appear at the trial and deliver up his accomplices in the face of the whole world.  The respect, however, of Chancellor Seguier for his rank spared him this crowning disgrace.  The king’s orders to his brother, after being submitted to the cardinal, bore this note in the minister’s hand:  “Monsieur will have in his place of exile twelve thousand crowns a month, the same sum that the King of Spain had promised to give him.”