In 1631, de Jars was allowed to return, or was recalled, to his native country. Whether he was lured over to France, that he might be within the grasp of his potent enemy, cannot now be ascertained. It is probable that he was, for he did not long remain at liberty. In February, 1632, he was involved in the downfall of Chateauneuf, the keeper of the seals, who had inexpiably offended the implacable minister. De Jars had sufficient demerit to bring down this misfortune on him; he was the friend, and, as Bassompierre affirms, the confidant of Chateauneuf, possessed the queen’s esteem, and was, perhaps, suspected of being looked upon with a favourable eye by the beautiful and fickle duchess of Chevreuse, of whom Richelieu was enamoured. As, however, the first two of these offences would hardly have justified his imprisonment and trial, and as the third had the same defect in a greater degree, and, besides, could not have been decorously urged against him by a high dignitary of the church, the crime attributed to him was that of assisting Anne of Austria to correspond with Spain, and of planning the removal to England of the queen mother and the duke of Orleans. It was the depth of winter when de Jars was thrown into one of the dungeons of the Bastile, and there he was kept for eleven months, till the clothes rotted off his back. The reader will remember what horrible abodes these dungeons were. It being supposed, perhaps, that his spirit was by this time enough broken, he was sent for trial to Tours, where a tribunal of obedient judges had been formed, for the express purpose of sitting in judgment upon him. At the head of this tribunal was one Laffemas, or La Fymas; a man who was redeemed from the contempt of mankind for his baseness, only by the hatred which was excited by his power and will to do mischief. He was the ready tool, or, to use a more emphatic and appropriate French phrase, the _âme damnée_ of Richelieu, and was capable of diving to the lowest deep of degradation, in the service of his master. He bore the well earned and significant nickname of “the cardinal’s hangman.” At the Bastile and at Troyes, de Jars underwent no fewer than eighty examinations. In these, Laffemas strained every nerve to seduce, or beguile, or terrify, the prisoner into avowals which would manifest or imply guilt in himself or in his friends. But de Jars was proof alike against feigned sympathy, intreaties, artful snares, and ferocious threats. Not a word dropped from his lips by which any one could be criminated. Laffemas had no sinecure office in conducting this iniquitous affair; he was often lashed by de Jars with unsparing severity, as a mendacious and deceitful coward; nor did the cardinal himself escape without a full portion of stinging censure.