In November 1617 Nicole du Plessis-Richelieu, the Bishop’s younger sister, was married quietly in Paris to a distinguished but eccentric Angevin noble, the Marquis de Maillé-Brézé. Nicole was now a woman of thirty. She had lived at Richelieu until her mother’s death; her portion cannot have been large; of her brothers, one was a more or less struggling courtier, one a monk, one a politician out of office. She possessed little beyond a singular beauty and charm; the Marquis de Brézé, who married her for love, cannot have foreknown the brilliant thing he was doing. Brother-in-law to the most powerful man in Europe, father-in-law of the great Condé, Marshal of France, governor of Anjou, Viceroy of Catalonia, the Marquis had everything; and, “extravagant” as he was, cared most of all for a good dog and a new book. But the marriage turned out unhappily. Nicole de Richelieu went out of her mind--one of her mad fancies being that she was made of glass--and died shut up in the castle of Saumur. M. de Brézé was a bad husband, though a clever and accomplished man. According to the stories of the time, it was his unkindness and brutal infidelity that upset poor Nicole’s weak brain. The Bishop, of course, was not present at his sister’s marriage; but he appears to have made all the necessary arrangements with M. de Brézé, leaving the actual ceremony to be managed by Henry de Richelieu and his young wife. The Duc de Luynes was nervous on his lonely pinnacle of power. The presence of the Queen-mother at Blois was a constant anxiety to him; she was not only, in his eyes, an enemy to the State, but his own personal and unforgiving enemy. And more than the Queen-mother he feared her friends; certain of the great nobles, who were already beginning to resent his exaltation, and those former ministers who had been the real strength of her rule. Barbin was still in the Bastille. With an appearance of leniency, Luynes made his imprisonment easier and winked at a correspondence between him and the Queen. Copies of every letter came into the hands of Luynes. Marie’s messengers boasted of their mistress’s new freedom and speedy return to the Court. These intrigues, dangerous from Luynes’ point of view, came to a sudden end. Barbin, strictly imprisoned, nearly lost his head; many arrests were made; two or three poor creatures who had written pamphlets on the Queen’s side were cruelly put to death; Marie’s own imprisonment was made much more rigorous, royal guards and royal spies with new and strict orders being set to watch the Château de Blois.