'Read it,' she said, in a tired voice, waving her hand; and the cardinal read it. As he went on her fatigue suddenly disappeared; she leaned eagerly forward, her eyes bright and her cheeks glowing. 'What is it you say? That the king will see that my marriage—my _hateful_ marriage—shall be set aside, and that I am to go at once to Queen Eleanor at Fontainebleau? Oh, what joy! what a deliverance!' Jeanne's rapture was shared by her father, and next day they travelled, with very different feelings, over the road they had just come. [Illustration: The Cardinal reads the King's letter to Jeanne] To judge by her letters, Queen Marguérite seems to have been more angry at the way in which her daughter—and her brother—had been treated than relieved at the princess's escape from a husband whom she detested. Steps were at once taken, not only by the King of France, but by the Duke of Clèves, to implore from the Pope a dispensation setting aside the marriage contracted on July 15, 1540. And as the reason given for the appeal was the fact that the marriage had been forced on the bride against her will, the 'protests' were produced as evidence, and Jeanne felt with pride they had not been drawn up for nothing. Indeed, she was bidden by Francis to write a third one, which was sent straight to Pope Paul III. But royal marriages are neither made nor marred in a day, and a year and a half dragged by before Jeanne was a free woman again. After some months spent with her mother at Alençon, she returned to Plessis, with Madame de Silly, to await alone the decision of the Pope. Here in the chapel, on Easter Day, Jeanne addressed the bishops and nobles assembled to hear High Mass, and read to them a short statement of the events relating to her marriage five years before, begging that the Cardinal de Tournon might be sent to Rome without delay. This time Pope Paul III. paid more attention to the matter than he had done before, and by Whitsuntide the contract was annulled, and Jeanne and her bridegroom henceforth were strangers.