Gaston left Brussels one day in October, and galloped hard to the frontier. He had been an exile for two years, and was enchanted to see France again. His little daughter, Mademoiselle, now seven years old, met him at Limours, and flew joyfully into the arms of a gay and fascinating father. As to Madame, left behind in Flanders, her marriage was solemnly declared null and void by an assembly of French clergy, as having been contracted against the civil law. In this decision, however, the clergy acted on Gallican lines, independently of the Pope, who was of a different opinion; and although, after long resistance, Monsieur formally submitted, he had protected himself in advance by a letter to Urban VIII. refusing to be bound by any extorted promise. The consequence was, that Richelieu’s apparent triumph in this affair of the Lorraine marriage only lasted his life. Gaston and Marguerite remained faithful to each other; and the stiff Madame who reigned in after years at Blois and at the Luxembourg was the same Princess, the heroine, in her adventurous girlhood, of a secret marriage and a romantic escape. It was that private letter of Gaston’s to the Pope which brought about the ruin of the unlucky Puylaurens. He had gained high favour with Richelieu, who had purchased his faithful service, as he thought, by making him a duke and a peer of France and by marrying him to his own first cousin, Mademoiselle Philippe de Pontchâteau, younger daughter of his aunt, Louise du Plessis, his father’s sister. The marriage took place in Paris at the end of November 1634, and on the same day the Duc de la Valette, son of the Duc d’Épernon and widower of Henry IV.’s daughter, Mademoiselle de Verneuil, was married to the elder sister, Marie de Pontchâteau, and the Comte, afterwards Maréchal, de Guiche to another cousin, Mademoiselle du Plessis de Chivray. The Cardinal celebrated the triple wedding by a magnificent fête. At this time the first nobles in France found it politic to quarrel for the honour of his alliance, and it was matter of general talk in society that he meant to marry Monsieur to Madame de Combalet, the Lorraine marriage being set aside. This report even reached the ears of Monsieur’s little daughter, and filled her with just indignation. A few weeks after the wedding the Cardinal’s spies brought him not only the secret, well kept by Puylaurens, of Monsieur’s letter to Rome, but proofs of a fresh treasonable correspondence carried on by the new Duke with Spain. Swiftly fell Richelieu’s vengeance. Puylaurens, with several of his friends, was arrested at the Louvre on February 14, and carried off by royal order to Vincennes. The entreaties of Monsieur, newly reconciled at Court, delayed his trial, but he died after four months of prison. “His good fortune,” says Richelieu, “withdrew him from this world, and saved him from the infamy of a shameful death, which he could not have escaped.”