The Abbé de St. Germain, on ascertaining the terms offered to his royal protectress, earnestly urged her not to reject them. "It is not just, Madame," he said frankly and disinterestedly, "that you should suffer for us. When your Majesty is once more established in France, you will find sufficient opportunities of serving us, and of enabling us to reside either here or elsewhere. Extricate yourself, Madame, from your painful situation, and spend the remainder of your life in your adopted country, where you will be independent of the aid of foreigners." Unhappily for herself, however, Marie de Medicis disregarded this wholesome and generous advice; and although Richelieu, in order to save appearances, from time to time repeated the proposal, she continued to persist in an exile which could only be terminated at his pleasure.[198] Having succeeded by this crafty policy in inducing a general impression that the unfortunate Queen persisted from a spirit of obstinacy in remaining out of the kingdom, when she could at any moment return on advantageous conditions, the Cardinal next exerted himself to create a misunderstanding between Marie de Medicis and Monsieur, for which purpose he secretly caused it to be asserted to the Prince and Puylaurens that the Queen-mother, anxious to make her own terms to the exclusion of Gaston, had despatched several messengers to the French Court with that object. Monsieur affected to discredit the report, but Puylaurens, who was weary of an exile which thwarted his ambition, eagerly welcomed the intelligence, and soon succeeded in inducing Gaston to give it entire credence. Thenceforward all confidence was necessarily at an end between the mother and the son; and the favourite, apprehensive that should Marie de Medicis conclude a treaty with the sovereign before his master had made his own terms, she might, in order to advance her own interests, sacrifice those of the Prince, hastened to despatch a trusty messenger to ascertain the conditions which Louis was willing to accord to his brother. The reply which Puylaurens received from the Cardinal was most encouraging; Richelieu being anxious that Monsieur should act independently of the Queen-mother, and thus weaken the cause of both parties, while his gratification was increased by the arrival of a second envoy accredited by Gaston himself, who offered in his name, not only to make every concession required of him should he be restored to the favour of the King, but even to allow the minister to decide upon his future place of abode; while Puylaurens, on his side, offered to resign his claim to the hand of the Princesse de Phalsbourg, the sister of the Duc de Lorraine, which had been pledged to him, if he could induce his Eminence to bestow upon him that of one of his own relatives.