La Guesdon, along with her husband, had been in the service of Sainte Croix, and before her marriage had been in that of the Marchioness. She had been implicated in the poisonings. La Chappelain had acted in Paris the part of a fortune-teller. By means of her supposed prevision of the future she was able to presage the death of those marked down by Mme. de Brinvilliers and Sainte Croix for destruction. La Guesdon died in the prison at Villefranche in 1717, La Chappelain in 1724. In the place itself is the opening into an extensive cavern. In 1674 a conspiracy was raised to capture the citadel and deliver it over to the Spaniards. It was widely ramified through the Cerdagne and Roussillon, neither content at having been made over to France by the Treaty of the Pyrenees. Some of the leading spirits in the plot were the men of the family of Llar, in Villefranche, whose dilapidated and dingy _hôtel_ may be seen in the Rue des Juifs. The cavern mentioned served as a place of meeting and a storehouse for arms. The conspiracy was betrayed by Inez de Llar, daughter of the chief man in the plot, Charles de Llar. He and her brother and relatives involved in it were executed. The unfortunate Inez, broken-hearted at having brought ruin on her family, ended her days in a convent. In 1793 the Spanish general Crespo succeeded in making himself master of Villefranche, on 4 August; but on 19 September, Gilly, at the head of the second battalion of the Grenadiers of Gard, composed of 450 men, retook the place by an act of audacity. He disposed his men on the heights as though the vanguard of an army, and then rode up to the outposts with sixty grenadiers behind him, and haughtily summoned the Spanish commandant to surrender to General Dagobert, whose army, he said, was at hand, and who would give no quarter if the place were not immediately given up. The frightened Crespo consented, and an hour later Gilly entered Villefranche at the head of the little army. From Villefranche the distance is hardly five miles to Vernet, up the valley of the Riu Major. The road passes Corneilla, where there is a curious Romanesque church with a square tower and a fine marble, sculptured doorway, as also, what is a rare feature, a retable of carved marble of 1345, by an artist named Carcall de Berga. It represents incidents in the life of our Lord. At the Revolution it was pulled down, but was re-erected by an unintelligent mason, who put it together badly, as may be seen by the disorder into which the inscriptions have been thrown. The counts of Cerdagne were much attached to Corneilla, and erected here a palace, which was abandoned later and given up to the Augustinian canons.