While employed in this petty warfare, which must have soon ended in his dismissal, a circumstance occurred, which, though it was the means of reconciling the Queen to Jovellanos for a time, has finally consigned him to a fortress in Majorca, where to this day he lingers under a confinement no less unjust than severe. The ceremony of Godoy’s marriage was scarcely over, when he resumed his intimacy with La Tudó in the most open and unguarded manner. The Queen, under a relapse of jealousy, seemed so determined to clip the wings of her spoiled favourite, that Jovellanos was deceived into a hope of making this pique the means of reclaiming his patron, if not to the path of virtue, at least to the rules of external propriety. Saavedra, better acquainted with the world, and well aware that Godoy could, at pleasure, resume any degree of ascendancy over the Queen, entered reluctantly into the plot. Not so Jovellanos. Treating this Court intrigue as one of the regular lawsuits on which he had so long practised his skill and impartiality, he could not bring himself to proceed without serving a notice upon the party concerned. He accordingly forwarded a remonstrance to the Prince of the Peace, in which he reminded him of his public and conjugal duties, in the most forcible style of forensic and moral eloquence. The Queen, in the mean time, had worked up her husband into a feeling approaching to anger against Godoy, and the decree for his banishment was all but signed before the offending gallant thought himself in such danger as to require the act of submission, which alone could restore him to the good graces of his neglected mistress. He owed, however, his safety to nothing but Saavedra’s indecision and dilatoriness. That minister could not be persuaded to present the decree of banishment for the royal signature, till the day after it had been agreed upon. Godoy, in the mean time, obtained a private interview with the Queen, who, under the influence of a long-checked and returning passion, in order to exculpate herself, represented the Ministers--the very men whom Godoy had raised into power--as the authors of the plot; and probably attributed the plan to Jovellanos, making him, from this moment, the marked object of the favourite’s resentment.