The time has come when justice of a new kind must be done to Monsieur, and probably it is the only time when a creditable fact will be recorded in his history. He stood firm in his determination to maintain his marriage. Try as the Cardinal might, and by all the means familiar to him from habitual use, he could not force Monsieur to relax his fidelity to his consort. D'Orléans was virtuous on this one point, but his manner of virtue was the manner of Gaston; there are different ways of sustaining the marriage vows, and Monsieur's way was not praiseworthy. His experience had passed as a veil blown away by the wind. His passion for intrigue still held sway, he always had at least one plot in process of infusion, and his results were fatal to his assistants. In the heat of his desire to rid himself of the Cardinal, he simulated change of heart so well that the Cardinal was deceived. Suspicious at first of the sincerity of Gaston's professions, after long and close observation he became convinced that the Prince was, in truth, repentant. It was at that epoch, when free exercise of an undisciplined will was made possible by Richelieu's conviction of his own security, that Monsieur laid his plan of assassination with de Soissons; at that time there was but opinion in France--de Richelieu was a tyrant, there could be no hope of pleasure while he lived. Let him die, let France hear that he was dead, and all the world could be happy and free to act, not according to the dogmas of an egotist by the grace of God, but by the rule of the greatest good to the greatest number.
The conspirators had found a time and a place favourable to their enterprise. It was during the siege of Corbie. The King was there attended by his Minister. Monsieur and the Count were there; so were the men whom they had engaged to kill the Cardinal. Culpable as the two scoundrels had always been, when the whole country was in arms it was impossible to find a reasonable excuse for refusing them commands, so they were at the front with all the representative men of the country, and they had good reason for supposing that one murder--a movement calculated to relieve the nation--might pass unnoticed in the general noise and motion of the siege. The time was ripe; Monsieur and Soissons had put their heads together and decided that the moment had come to strike the blow and rid the country of the Cardinal.