The Cardinal desired the Queen to command me to accept of the nomination to the cardinalate, “which,” said he, “La Riviere has snatched with insolence and acknowledged with treachery.”  I excused myself by saying that I had taken a resolution never to accept of the cardinalship by any means which seemed to have relation to the civil wars, to the end that I might convince the Queen that it was the most rigid necessity which had separated me from her service.  I rejected upon the same account all the other advantageous propositions he made me, and, he still insisting that the Queen could do no less than confer upon me something that was very considerable for the signal service I was likely to do her Majesty, I answered: 

“There is one point wherein the Queen can do me more good than if she gave me a triple crown.  Her Majesty told me just now that she will cause M. le Prince to be apprehended.  A person of his high rank and merit neither can nor ought to be always shut up in prison, for when he comes abroad he will be full of resentment against me, though I hope my dignity will be my protection.  There are a great many gentlemen engaged with me who, in such a juncture, would be ready to serve the Queen.  And if it seemed good to your Majesty to entrust one of them with some important employment, I should be more pleased than with ten cardinals’ hats.”

The Cardinal told the Queen that nothing was more just, and the affair should be considered between him and me.

We had several conferences, at which we agreed on gratifications for some of our friends and to arrest the Prince de Conde, the Prince de Conti, and the Duc de Longueville.

The Cardinal took occasion to speak of the treachery of La Riviere.  “This man,” said he, “takes me to be the most stupid creature living, and thinks he shall be to-morrow a cardinal.  I diverted myself to-day with letting him try on some scarlet cloth I lately received from Italy, and I put it near his face to know whether a scarlet colour or carnation became him best.”

I heard from Rome that his Eminence was not behindhand with La Riviere upon the score of treachery.  For on the very day he got him nominated by the King, he wrote a letter to Cardinal Sachelli more fit to recommend him to a yellow cap than to a red one.  This letter, nevertheless, was full of tenderness for La Riviere, which Mazarin knew was the only way to ruin him with Pope Innocent, who hated Mazarin and all his adherents.

Madame de Chevreuse undertook to see how the Duc d’Orleans would relish the design of imprisoning the Princes.  She told him that, though the Queen was not satisfied with M. le Prince, yet she could not form a resolution of apprehending him without the concurrence of his Royal Highness.  She magnified the advantages of bringing over to the King’s service the powerful faction of the Fronde, and the daily dangers Paris was exposed to, both by fire and sword.  This last reason touched him as much or more than all, for he trembled every time he came to the Parliament; M. le Prince very often could not prevail upon him to go at all, and a fit of colic was generally assigned as the reason of his absence.  At length he consented, and on the 18th of January the three Princes were put under arrest by three officers of the Queen’s Guards.