It appears that the d’Entragues, aware that their plea that the court at Rouen was improperly constituted was certain to be overruled by the King’s Council and the case sent back to Rouen for trial, in which event their chance of obtaining a verdict would be a very remote one, had decided to appeal to Rome, and proceeded to petition the Pope to direct that the affair should be adjudicated upon by ecclesiastical commissioners appointed by his Holiness. The petition was granted, though it would appear to have been very unusual for the Vatican to do so, unless it had first been ascertained whether the other party were willing for the case to be submitted to a Papal tribunal; and one of the commissioners appointed was the Bishop of Dax. But, by some error, due no doubt to the similarity of names, the Papal authority to try the case was sent, not to this prelate, but to the Archbishop of Aix. Now, the Archbishop of Aix, if we are to believe Bassompierre, was “a needy rogue, and generally regarded as mad”; and when the Bishop of Beauvais, at whose suggestion the appeal to Rome had been made, and whom the writer accuses of being in love with Marie d’Entragues, offered him a bribe of 1,200 crowns to defeat the ends of justice, he promptly accepted it. Thereupon, without condescending to consult his fellow-commissioners he sent a citation to Bassompierre’s house, summoning him to appear before him; and, after waiting three days, without troubling to ascertain whether that gentleman had ever received the citation, and without hearing any evidence, pronounced, on his own authority, the promise of marriage--which he had not even seen, as it was, with the other documents connected with the case, at Rome--good and valid, and condemned Bassompierre to execute it within fifteen days after Easter, on pain of excommunication. On learning of these extraordinary proceedings, Bassompierre returned to Paris in all haste, and appealed to the Parlement; and that body, always very jealous of Papal interference with matters which it considered within its own jurisdiction, promptly quashed the archbishop’s decision. He then went to the Queen-Mother, who, “indignant, like everyone else, at the infamy of this man,” issued an order for the prelate’s arrest, which Bassompierre set out to execute, at the head of 200 stalwart Swiss. The archbishop, however, had prudently gone into hiding, where he remained until the Nuncio and the other bishops, fearing a scandal, succeeded in pacifying the infuriated Bassompierre, “the Nuncio giving him his word that within three months at latest his Holiness would quash, as the Parlement had already done, all the proceedings of this fool. And this he did.” This new development of the d’Entragues affair was only one of many difficulties which beset Bassompierre on his return to Paris:--