In his reply Louis assured her that he much regretted to learn that the Duc d’Orleans had been wanting in respect towards her person, but reminded her that such could never have been the case had she followed his own advice and that of his faithful servants; and terminated his missive by an intimation that in the event of her placing in his power all her evil counsellors, in order that he might punish them as they deserved, and of her also pledging herself to love, as she ought to do, the good servants of the Crown, he might then believe that she was no longer so ill-disposed as she had been when she left France.

The disappointed Queen-mother at once recognized the hand of the Cardinal in this cold and constrained despatch, which was merely a renewal of her sentence of banishment; as Richelieu well knew that the high heart and generous spirit of the Tuscan Princess would revolt at the enormity of sacrificing those who had clung to her throughout her evil fortunes, in order to secure her own impunity.

Unfortunately, alike for Marie de Medicis and Gaston d’Orleans, the amiable Infanta, who had proved so patient as well as so munificent a host—­and who had, without murmur or reproach, seen her previously tranquil and pious Court changed by the dissipation and cabals of her foreign guests into a perpetual arena of strife and even bloodshed—­the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, whose very name was reverenced throughout the whole of the Low Countries, expired on the 1st of December at the age of sixty-eight, after having governed Flanders during thirty-five years.

This event was a source of alarm as well as of sorrow to the royal exiles, who could not anticipate an equal amount of forbearance from the Marquis d’Ayetona,[202] by whom she was provisionally replaced in the government; and who had long and loudly expressed his disgust at the perpetual feuds which convulsed the circles of the Queen-mother and her son, and declared that they had caused him more annoyance than all the subjects of the King his master in the Low Countries.[203] In this extremity both Marie and Monsieur became more than ever anxious to procure their recall to France; and Gaston soon succeeded in ascertaining the conditions upon which his pardon was to be accorded.  Letters of abolition were to be granted for his past revolt:  his several appanages were to be restored to him:  the sum of seven hundred thousand crowns were to be paid over to meet his immediate exigences:  he was to be invested with the government of Auvergne, and to have, as a bodyguard, a troop of gendarmes and light-horse, of which the command was to be conferred upon Puylaurens, to whom the offer of a dukedom was renewed; and, in the event of Monsieur declining to reside at Court, he was to be at liberty to fix his abode either in Auvergne or in Bourbonnais, as he saw fit; while, in any and every case, he was to live according to his own pleasure alike in Paris or the provinces.