In the spring of 1627 Bouteville was in Flanders, having made France too hot to hold him. The Archduchess Isabel, from her Court at Brussels, wrote to ask his pardon of Louis XIII., who refused it, adding, however, that he might return to France safe from justice, on condition that he appeared neither in Paris nor at Court. This answer touched Bouteville’s pride. He had a quarrel with the Baron de Beuvron; he resolved to fight it out in Paris in the teeth of King, Cardinal, and edicts new and old. Each man had two seconds: it was a triple duel with swords, three against three; and it was fought in broad daylight in the Place Royale, the most fashionable square in Paris. The windows of the high red houses were crowded with spectators. Both principals escaped unhurt; but the Comte des Chapelles, Bouteville’s second, killed his adversary, M. de Bussy d’Amboise, governor of Vitry. Honour being satisfied, the survivors fled for their lives. M. de Beuvron and two other men got away safely to England. M. de Bouteville and M. des Chapelles, on their way to Lorraine, were foolhardy enough to sleep at Vitry, where the fatal news had outrun them, and “the dead man’s mother,” says Bassompierre, “arrested them.” They were brought back to Paris, imprisoned in the Bastille, and after a short trial sentenced to death. Then the whole opinion of society rose passionately in their favour. Such edicts were useless; human nature could not obey them. Men must quarrel, and there was one honourable, approved way of settling their quarrels: they must fight. If they did not they were scorned as cowards; the King himself sneered at their prudence, their obedience to his own edicts. Thus cried every gentleman in France, and the Cardinal’s heart must have echoed the cry. Though he would not save the victims, saying that it was a question which throat should be cut--that of the duel or that of the law; though he listened unmoved to the prayers of their friends and relations--the Princesse de Condé and the Duc de Montmorency were Bouteville’s cousins, for the best blood of France ran in his veins--yet the words with which, in his _Memoirs_, he mourns the two young men, have a ring of sincerity. Famous for courage in their lives, it did not fail them, he says, at the approach of a disgraceful death. “There was nothing feeble in their speech, nothing low in their actions. They received the news of death as if it had been that of pardon.... They were well prepared to die.... There was one difference between them: Bouteville appeared sad in those last hours, and the Comte des Chapelles joyful; Bouteville sad for the faults he had committed, and the other joyful for the hope he had of Paradise.”